BOSNIA
Whenever there is an unbalance of power the potential for rape increases. Randoem[RW1] rape during wartime has become a common phenomenon when there is a lack of army discipline. In Bosnia, Herzegovinia, in Peru and Rwanda, girls a[RW2] nmd women have been singled out for rape, torture, imprisonment and execution. Rape is the most intrusive traumatic event that an individual canwill experience.

Rape is now increasingly being used a a tactic of terror.

Huong addresses this barbaric crime in her work called BOSNIA. When a woman is raped it is not only a rape of body but a rape of her spirit. This tormented woman was raped in the war of ethnic cleansing. She bears a bastard child and returns home only to be raped again by the rejection of her family and of her community. She is shame-facedd, shunned, discarded. The shame of rape is difficult to escape. She is muted. in her humiliation. How do you give words to the unspeakable?

The stick figures are the "body count". They do not look human because they are not seen as human. Not seen aseven real.

Women become the rape and famine victims, the Refugees, the forgotten statistics in the wars of men.

Will her children fall into the same course…in the next war? Huong's conviction to expose this barbarism in her art is unyielding.

With her brush she repeats the words of Kipling: "As I suffer so do you."

Text By, Sandi Wicina, Curator of Arts
©2004. Art, War, and Peace Museum.