Rapism
TIFF CHAN
RAPISM by TIFF CHAN
Rapism is the Final Year Project created by Tiff Chan,
Hong Kong student artist from School of Creative Media,
City University of Hong Kong.
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In this project, she tried to criticize social issues of blaming the victims who suffered from sexual harrasment and rape by a series of illustration.
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Painted with contrasting colors and expressive brushes,the series of artwork also reveals the inner feelings of the victims in a surreal way.
She believes that art can act as a tool to communicate with people without language barrier, to express emotion and build connections.
The purpose of this series of artwork is to present the viewer the feelings of the victims facing rape or sexual harassment: how their normal life is being distorted and how it ruined their attitudes to sex-
it is a torture to them, but not an art of showing love to them.
Rapism, Tiff defines this term as to people being forced to do something they are not willing to do.
The artwork became her own feedback to the sexual harrasment stories that she found through the internet and she believe that the whole work have express the feelings of those victims, including herself.
"My body and my mind is disconnected, it does not belong to me anymore"
"I am torn and melted"
Tiff also want to criticize the general misunderstanding and stereotype of how rape is happened, and how judgemental can people be when they come across to this topic. They have their own definition of rape based on their social background. She also find it is ridiculous for the act of blaming the victim for being too “sexy”, getting too much alcohol and for the belief of the victim had somehow invited the rapist by their action. The media also use many brutal words to describe the victims and to catch attention from the public.
She also critize the culture of classifiying women as an object to “appreciate” in the popular culture. Many people are still having a set of old thoughts from the man-dominance world or being stubborn on the image of what woman should be like or behave. She believes that this kind of culture should be responsible for the rationalization of the sexual harrasment and on the other hand, influence the victims's decision of not seeking for help.
Tiff would like to show all this kind of phenomenon that we do not aware of by part of her own experience in this series of artwork. She also wish that she could raise the awareness of people to these issues. One of her intention to create this series of artwork was to cure the heart of those rape survivors by expressive paintings, and they should not be hesitate to speak up and they should never feel guilty for being rape.
Rapism 是城市大學創意媒體系的學生，陳穎怡的個人畢業作品。(2015)
她在此作品中，批評了現今社會上既有的觀念：
社會對受到強姦和性騷擾的受害人十分的不友善，
包括責怪受害人沒有提防，穿著過份暴露，沒有好好保護自己，醉酒等等。
很多人不是對有邪惡念頭的壞人作出責罵，反而認為事件是受害人所犯下的「錯誤」而引發起來。
比起陌生人，其實很多加害者都是受害人身邊的人，如老師，同學等等，
他們利用受害人的友善和信任來欺騙受害人，
即使受害者對加害人只是付出了信任和沒有警覺性，
很多人仍然事情認為是受害者的責任。
社會亦十分忽視受害人的人感受，新聞大多採用擁有強烈色彩的字眼如「短裙少女」等等來形容受害人，同時很多人把強姦及性侵犯當作很輕微的罪行：覺得受害人又沒有受到很多實際的傷害。很多人亦認為此現象不普及，其實這些事情常常發生，只是太少人注意。
陳穎怡亦想藉此作品表達受害人的心情，及受害者所受到的傷害。
他們往往感到性不再是一種享受，而是一種折磨。
一些最普通不過的物件／味道亦能令受害人回想起所有曾經發生的傷害。
作為曾經的受害人之一，她亦藉此系列作品表達了她自己的不滿的感受。
「我被撕裂，溶解。」
「我的身體和我的靈魂不曾連結，身體不再屬於我」
她更希望的是有受害人看到她的作品後能痊癒，不再陷入每日責備自己的痛苦中。同時希望能喚起社會對此題材的關注。
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