Installation for University of Toledo’s group exhibition: Faces of Trafficking: Using Art to Raise Critical Consciousness for Social Justice

installation_1.jpg

Exhibition Statement, University of Toledo Art Dept:

“Human trafficking is a form of “modern day slavery,” in which victims are forced and coerced to engage in commercial sex or labor for the profit and benefit of others. An estimated 40 million people are slaves across the globe today (source: International Labor Organization, 2017), with 17,500 victims trafficked into the U.S. each year.

These victims have been brutalized, raped and sold. They suffer from chronic trauma related to their abuse. Many have post-traumatic stress disorder and suffer from chronic health conditions; some leave with traumatic brain injury or other disability. Up to 70 percent of our child victims who don’t receive help spiral into adult sex work [sic], where the probability for violence, drug addiction, poverty and HIV is high. Because of increased awareness through the efforts of The University of Toledo Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute, as well as the Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition, our community has diligently called in tips to the FBI Innocence Lost Task Force here in northwest Ohio. This has led to more than 260 rescues of local youth and 100 convictions of traffickers in our community. Awareness works. Awareness translates into freedom.”