ABOVE: Left to right, Carmen Politis, O’Leary Bacon and Ali Hansen have contributed artworks to the Empty Chairs—Painful Windows, an exhibit of art at the Cincinnati YWCA to mark Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October.

114 women in Cincinnati have been killed by domestic abusers in the last 16 years, when the YWCA first started keeping a running tally. They’re being commemorated now in a YWCA art exhibition called Empty Chairs—Painful Windows, made up of works contributed by local artists who volunteer at the Cincinnati YWCA battered women’s shelter and other facilities. The centerpiece of the show is Solemn Table, a black-draped table fully set with cutlery, plates, goblets, and flowers, with 12 chairs around it, each empty except for a photograph of a woman killed in a domestic homicide.

If this all rings a bell, it should: it’s a gloomy imitation of The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago’s groundbreaking installation piece from the late 1970s, which was a large triangular dining table set with ceramic plates shaped like elaborately embellished female genitalia. Now, surely this imitation is a sincere form of flattery, and Chicago, one of the strongest feminist artists of her generation, would surely support the Cincinnati exhibit. But reading the YWCA’s website posed, for us, an uncomfortable question: where are the voices of the victims—dead or alive—in this exhibit? The YWCA says the pieces—painted windowshades (the painful windows part)—are the work of local artists who volunteer and work with children and teenagers affected by domestic violence. But what about the women in the shelter themselves? Why isn’t it their work comprising this show? One of the primary focuses of feminist art has always been agency—asserting the right of women to speak, unmediated, for themselves. So why the silence now, at the YWCA of all places?

LINK: Cincinnati Enquirer > Art exhibit puts a face on domestic violence here