“How can art address atrocities? This is a question that artists have been asking for centuries. What is an artist’s aesthetic responsibility to the trauma of others? I think some of the most powerful art has been about grief, loss and mourning and see my job as an artist is to keenly observe the world, reflect and respond. I cannot remain silent to human suffering, especially violence against women.

“In response to three horrific events around the world, I gathered hundreds of girls’ clothes and arranged them on three stone altars to act as ‘relics’ of these young ‘gender’ martyrs. Commemorating their spirit, these ready-made sculptures inspired by Arte Povera acknowledge the incalculable loss of unrealized potential and hopelessness in the face of unfathomable human cruelty [while being] juxtaposed against the obligation we have as citizens of the world to combat the war on women.

“The central altar exhibits saris worn by women and girls in India referencing two cousins who were gang raped, murdered and lynched in Uttar Pradesh. The left altar displays hijabs representing the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Chibok, Nigeria. And the third altar presents a pile of aprons and uniforms symbolizing those worn by girls at the Magdalene Asylums and Laundries, forced labor institutions for young ‘problematic’ girls and women, predominantly in Ireland, but also in the United Kingdom, Europe, and America.

“Shrines, part of every major religion’s practice, provide a space for contemplation, petition and rituals of remembrance. One small framed photograph of each of these tragic events sits on the altar aside each sculpture allowing each viewer to discover the narrative in their own time. My goal was to restore a semblance of dignity that they were denied while they were alive.”

— Patricia Cronin

About Patricia Cronin

(Beverly, Massachusetts, 1963)

She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

For more than twenty-five years, Patricia Cronin has employed a highly original interdisciplinary approach to figurative art, conceptual art, and feminist values that examines issues of gender, sexuality, and social justice. Her oeuvre resists categorization with major bodies of work focusing on marriage equality, feminist art history, and the international human rights of women and girls transiting across two dimensional and three-dimensional platforms. Cronin’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide, including Grand Arts (Kansas City, Missouri), the American Academy in Rome Art Gallery (Rome, Italy), the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, New York), the Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy), The Lab Gallery (Dublin, Ireland), and the Tampa Museum of Art (Tampa, Florida). She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, the Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. She has been a Trustee of both the American Academy in Rome and the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. Cronin is a Professor of Art at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Artist website: patriciacronin.net

Artist Instagram: @Patricia_Cronin

Artist Twitter: @patriciaacronin