Opening Night 5.19
DAY 1 RECAP
A Miraculous Crossing of the Starting Line.
After a sleepless week, and literally two sleepless nights in a row as I prepared to open the exhibition and put the finishing touches on the installations, the doors to AMCS finally opened Friday at 8 PM. Of course, by finishing touches, I mean building the primary installation structure from scratch, which (unsurprisingly given how all the pieces went) last minute needed re-engineering for stability at 7 PM Friday before opening. It also included painting a spider web on a a 96 x 80 ft wall piece for 10 hours straight and starting the gallery mural at 4 AM Friday morning. It’s practically miraculous that everything got done, but it did, thanks to a few helping hands and the sheer artist grit I had to find at the bottom of the tank as I pushed my body to keep performing.
Me painting the base images of Where The Sword Really Falls a few hours before the opening.
With everything up on the walls and installations ready in position, the art is able to speak in a completely different manner. You can feel them take root in the space and begin to really hear both their unique story and the collection’s story better.
The night began with an impromptu silent performance of the final touch to my installation called His Bedroom. It is a scene of the bedroom of a Child Trafficker— a scene of chaos and mental disturbance. Red satin sheets messily lay on a black king sized bed reflecting the warm light of the spotlight illuminating the adjoining installation The Past Hangs Over Me— an installation symbolizing the strong theme of rejection present throughout the entire collection. A red X is painted over a white t-shirt corner to corner in a full expression of both inner and outer rejection.
Watch below:
Money on bed, featured in the installation His Bedroom. Photo by Bonilla.
The night was a success. We raised just over $500 with ticket sales and direct donations for the opening (You can donate here). We had an array of beautiful familiar and new faces showing support, appreciating provocative art, and sharing their experiences with each other, while raising awareness of this sensitive issue.
People’s reactions were great. A new face was David Castrillon, Director of Development at His House Children's Home, which supports children in the foster care system, which sparked an incredible deep conversation of how widespread the incidence of children in the foster care system being sex trafficked is. One of the statistics on the unique gallery mural UNDERREPORTED, is “88% [of the 1 in 6 missing children who end up trafficking victims] come from foster care”. The gallery mural was the result of a week of uncertainty of how to transmit a set of statistics that support a comprehensive understanding of the issue. The kind of information that only research into the subject reveals and allows us to grasp the magnitude of how extensive the reach and affect of child abuse, child trafficking, and child sexual exploitation is in the world.
CHAMPZY, “UNDERREPORTED” gallery mural. Photo by Bonilla.
My hands at 2:45 PM on Friday <6 hours from opening, finishing UNDERREPORTED.
Pictured: CHAMPZY and David Castrillon. Photo by Bonilla
Eventually as the night developed, I got on the mic and welcomed the room with an unrehearsed commencement speech, delivered from the heart. The shirt you see me wearing says I do not work for money twice on the front with the first crossed out, as an art piece and statement I’m making inwardly and outwardly.
A remarkable aspect of how the night went was how it prompted conversations about people’s knowledge of child abuse and even their own stories. I and others were able to hold space for people sharing some of their most vulnerable history. It’s powerful what a dedicated container can do for people— it can make them feel safe to share where they otherwise wouldn’t. A MISSING CHILD SPEAKS was conceived to be that kind of container and to serve as a vehicle for increased awareness.
Almost everyone I spoke to remarked on the unique theme of the collection— how the emotional trauma of the offenders is included in the narrative of the pieces and the collection itself. I found it necessary to include so that we weren’t just raising awareness on a deeply important issue, but also expanding our viewpoint to recognize and digest how we got to here. The word ‘distortion’ appears in many of the wall labels for each artwork, to emphasize the duality of humans and their shadow.
COming up: CHAMPZY STAGE PERFORMANCE SATURDAY MAY 27TH
“COMING HOME” THE STORY OF THE TRAFFICKER
An immersive stage performance set on the scene of the installation, “His Bedroom”, audio engineered to deliver and magnify the provocative and emotive theme of a true-story based child trafficking story, reinterpreted by CHAMPZY.
It is the most provocative artwork of the collection by far. It features my fullest creative inspiration to deliver a powerful message to the audience about the world of child trafficking and the contributing factor of unprocessed emotional trauma. It is truly the most exciting aspect of the collection for me to share with a greater audience and I look forward to finally bring this to the world at large.
The performance will be ticketed and viewable online via livestream for free. A professional live stream crew will be making sure it is delivered in the best possible resolution to anyone interested in attending or watching the replay.
Register Here: EVENTBRITE
THE LIVE PERFORMANCE IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ARTWORK OF THE COLLECTION.
LIVE.
IMMERSIVE.
PROVOCATIVE.
SEE YOU THERE.
Register Here: EVENTBRITE
Thank you for coming, reading, sharing, and donating.
Please make a contribution to this fundraiser at the following link:
https://my.ourrescue.org/fundraisers/a-missing-child-speaks-art-fundraiser
