See No Evil?

Wow, I have been crumby at posting regularly this week. I am sorry.

I was having some difficulty coming up with an idea for today's post when I stumbled across these images. These are the photos I took for my IS conference project in the fall of 2008. The conference was on "invisible dignity" so I took these photos of the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" poses (thanks to my lovely roomie who posed for the images) and displayed them on a canvas that I covered with a collage of words and images from magazines that related to the ideas presented in the conference about those who have become invisible in our society. Here's the artist's statement that I submited with the piece (sorry about it being a little bit preachy at moments):

The idea for this project began with a question voiced by Dennis Edney, lawyer to Omar Khadr, which came up over and over again throughout the entire conference: how could this happen? How have so many people fallen through the cracks without anyone stepping in to help?

This question really provoked me and as I thought about it all that came to my head was the phrase “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. As Christians we often use this phrase to describe how we should live. While avoiding evil is a good thing, I feel that this mentality has allowed us to become complicit in stripping away the dignity of others. In our efforts to see no evil we allow people to become invisible by not looking at them. In trying to hear no evil we become deaf to the stories of others and their cries for help. In attempting to speak no evil we say nothing in defense of those who are in need.

The three central pictures in this piece should be familiar to almost everyone. They are photos I have taken of the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” poses. These photos are surrounded by clippings from newspapers and magazines with images and words representative of those who possess invisible dignity. The elderly, the Inuit, farmers, third world citizens, the homeless, the mentally and physically disabled, victims of crime, these are just a few of the groups represented in this piece. Even the piece in its entirety does not represent everyone with invisible dignity. The three photos are large in comparison with the rest of the images since the reaction implied by them blocks out all possibility of recognizing those around us with invisible dignity. Despite the almost desperate covering of the eyes, ears, and mouth these people do not go away, they continue to exist all around us.

There is a phrase in the piece which says, “A world of unavoidable beauty, lost to avoidable blindness.” If we would open our eyes, uncover our ears, and unclench our mouths we would indeed see and hear evil, but we would also see and hear beauty. We would be freed to step up and make a difference, to unveil the dignity of those around us.

So, do you really see no evil?

There you have it. Not related to my day in any way, but an actual post nonetheless.