The Monument Quilt – a monument to rape survivors brought to you by FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture – may be coming to your city. And we highly recommend you check it out!
Throughout August and into September, The Monument Quilt will travel across the United States as a “public healing place by and for survivors of rape and abuse.” The 12-city tour will travel from Birmingham, Alabama to Middletown, Connecticut, showcasing survivors’ personal stories on pieces of bright red cloth. FORCE, the Baltimore-based artist collective that’s been stitching the stories together, were the masterminds behind the Victoria’s Secret “Pink Loves Consent” project and the Playboy “Consent Is Sexy” ploy. The quilt is a departure from that online activism, but by bringing survivors’ experiences into physical space, it’s also rewriting the entire narrative of the movement to end rape culture.
“By stitching our stories together, we are creating and demanding public space to heal,” said Hannah Brancato, co-director of FORCE, on the Monument Quilt website. “The Monument Quilt is a platform to not only tell our stories, but work together to forever change how our country responds to rape. We are creating a new culture where survivors are publicly supported, rather than publicly shamed.”
To find out if the Monument Quilt is coming to a city near you, visit themonumentquilt.org. Even if you can’t go, you can contribute a quilt square of your own!
