Artist returns to UMaine during Sexual Assault Awareness Month
Artist and education activist Traci Molloy will return to the University of Maine to facilitate a panel discussion and public conversation April 3 as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The event at 5:30 p.m. in Barrows Hall, “Against My Will: An Interactive Discussion on Rape Culture and Trauma,” will complement an outdoor public installation of Molloy’s art on the Mall April 2–25. The exhibit will feature de-identified images and stories of cisgender female members of the UMaine community who are survivors of sexual violence.
In October 2018, Molloy mounted an outdoor exhibit on the Mall featuring survivors from Alfred University.
Molloy’s art explores methods for processing trauma and grief, particularly evident during the aftermath of violence. The “Against My Will (UMaine)” exhibit celebrates human resiliency while providing a voice to a marginalized and often silenced population — sexual assault survivors.
The moderated panel discussion will focus on the exchange of information and ideas between audience members and panelists, who are assault survivors and co-collaborators in the installation.
An independent artist, Molloy creates collaborations with traumatized adolescents and young adults. She has partnered with children who lost parents in the attacks on 9/11, adolescents displaced from their home countries due to war or genocide, and disenfranchised youth from both rural and urban communities. She has offered artist lectures for numerous government and private agencies and educational institutions, including the Pentagon, Norman Rockwell Museum, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Her multimedia collaborations have been exhibited internationally in Johannesburg, South Africa and Tokyo, Japan. Five of her collaborations are in the permanent collection at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.
Molloy’s visit to UMaine has been organized by the Rising Tide Center, in partnership with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. The art exhibition is supported, in part, with an award from the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series, and with a grant from the Alton ’38 and Adelaide Hamm Campus Activity Fund.
For more information about the exhibit or panel discussion, or to request a reasonable accommodation, call the Rising Tide Center, 581.3439.