Silence is not Golden Series
My work examines the complex role of silence—what we are taught as children (children are to be seen and not heard) as well as its capacity to harm. In particular, I focus on the silences imposed on women, born of misogyny and a culture that demands compliance and complicity. These silences instruct us to police our tone, dilute our rage, and suppress our truths. Society insists that we shrink ourselves to fit the comfort of others, forcing us to carry the weight of unspoken pain and unseen injustices.
I wish to confront the moments when silence shifts from being a sanctuary to a lie. Using collage of holy texts, delicate patterns, and portraits of women with gold leaf masking their mouths, I explore the spaces between what is said and what is withheld. Each piece challenges the viewer to question the cost of staying quiet and the courage it takes to break the silence.
I invite you to see the silence as a presence—one that holds power, meaning, and responsibility. It is in the destruction [removal] of silence (eliminating the gold in our lives) that we often discover the raw, unvarnished truth. When women suffer misogyny, it tells us to be compliant and complicit. Its telling us to police our tone, watch our words, dilute our rage, and silence our truths.
Through this body of work, I aim to amplify voices of women around the world (including the United States) that have been stifled, reminding us of our collective accountability, and inspire dialogue in the face of a silence that demands to be broken.
Each piece challenges the societal demand for women to watch their words, soften their voices, and silence their anger. I want to honor the power in women’s unfiltered truths—the bold, unapologetic defiance of a silence that seeks to restrain.
This work is both a reclamation and a resistance. It is a reminder that breaking the silence is not just an act of courage but a necessary declaration of existence. By amplifying the voices and stories of those who have been silenced, I invite viewers to reflect on the spaces where their own silence might contribute to complicity and to consider the transformative potential of speaking out.
Women worldwide are silenced by many things created by men. Holy books, laws, medical dictates, shame and criticism, violent language against women, you're criticized if you don't look good, but you're also criticized if you look too good. You're either a slut or a prude.
Margaret Atwood wrote: “A voice is a human gift: it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.”
Let our voices ring, clear and bold, in the face of silence, in the face of oppression. We are the champions of our own destiny – liberated, empowered,. In a world where silence is not golden, our voices are pure gold.