Speak Your Truth: A Collective Voice Against Gender-Based Violence
An Exhibition presented in collaboration with Traveling Postcards
October 4 2024 - January 23 2025
The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts is pleased to host the exhibition Speak Your Truth.
"Art does not profess to rid the world of suffering and wounds. It does something with them, realizing that the soul is truly at a loss when afflictions cannot be put to use." - Shaun McNiff
The Speak Your Truth Exhibition embodies the transformative power of art, demonstrating its capacity to both heal personal traumas and catalyze societal change. Gender-based violence affects one in three women globally, as well as countless children, men, families, and communities. Confronting this humanitarian crisis can be challenging, especially for survivors in the healing process; art offers a unique pathway for engagement and understanding.
Over the past decade, Traveling Postcards has created safe spaces for healing and witnessing survivors' resilience. Traveling Postcards believes that by channeling traumatic experience into creativity, survivors of trauma can begin to heal, share their strengths with others, and become leaders in ending Gender- Based Violence. Speak Your Truth showcases hundreds of postcards created in diverse settings - from domestic violence shelters and college campuses to refugee centers and Native peoples' reservations. Each postcard represents a voice speaking out against gender-based violence.
The exhibition's power lies in its collective nature. Most postcards are anonymously gifted to survivors as gestures of solidarity and empathy, with recipients invited to create their own. This cycle of creation and connection forms a tapestry of shared experiences and support.
Through art, individuals find and capture their unique voices in ways that feel safe and empowering. This exhibition underscores that every voice matters, and that empathy, solidarity, and resilience are crucial in the fight against violence.
We invite viewers to engage with these works, to find inspiration in the collective strength they represent, and to consider how their own voices can contribute to meaningful change in their communities.