TITLE: Shattered Lives - Unshattered Dreams
DATE: March 3 - March 30 2002 & April 5 - 30, 2002
VENUE: Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St, Boston & Cambridge Center for Adult Education, One Story St, Cambridge
CONTACT PERSON: Myrna Balk at 617-734-9556, myrna.balk@verizon.net
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Etchings and Text by Myrna Balk
Drawings and Text by Nepali Women and Girls.
Also black and white photos of village life, women and children.
Boston Public Library,
Boston Room
700 Boylston St. Boston, Massachusetts
March 3 - March 30 2002
Hours: Monday through Thursday 9 AM - 9 PM
Friday and Saturday 9 AM - 5 PM
Opening Reception Sunday March 3, 2:00 4:30 PM
World Premieres 3 PM
Poetry written by Marjorie Agosin, winner of the United Nations leadership award for her work on Human rights. Author of more than 20 books. These poems are set to music by Jennie Gottschalk, graduate in composition, the Boston Conservatory of Music and will be sung by Sara Goldstein, Voice Faculty of The Boston Conservatory of Music who has performed throughout New England and Europe.
Show will be shown also at:
Cambridge Center for Adult Education
One Story Street
April 5 - 30, 2002
Opening reception Friday April 5 :30 8:00
*World Premier 7:30 pm
Hours
Mon.Thurs. 9 a.m.-9 p m
Friday 9 a.m - 5 p.m
Saturday 9 a.m -2 p.m
Both shows are handicapped accessible
ABOUT THE WORK IN THE SHOW
Myrna Balk, a well known Boston printmaker, spent much time with Nepali women and girls in Kathmandu who had been forced, for a variety of reasons, to become victims of sexual trafficking a world wide problem affecting more than seven million women and girls. The etching in this release is one of her series ³One Is too Many² which portrays her response to the tragic journey of these women and girls.
This work was in an invitational international art show at the UNITED NATIONS in New York in June 2000.
Returning to Nepal a second and third time, Ms. Balk met with over a hundred women and girls and drew with them. They were in training programs, shelters and in a remote village . These Nepali women wanted to tell their stories in pictures so as to inform the world about their lives. About the picture included here a women wrote, "I want to explain about domestic violence, the main problem in my village. In the picture the man is drinking and beats the woman. She and the children are helpless and cry as they are pulled out of the house."
Critical Appraisals: (more comments available on request)
"I find your work to be passionate, innovative and inspired."
*Galerie St. Etienne, New York, Kim Brockway:
"...these prints deal with a critical issue which deserves to be
brought to the attention of as broad a public as possible. Their success as artistic statements is due to the direct response and handling of the media as well as the honesty and strength of your feeling about the plight of these women and children." *Peter Scott, Department head of Printmaking, School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston
"Myrna Balk's work captures the anguish of women and children whose rights have ben violated. Ms. Balk¹s art challenges the world to acknowledge the imperative need for all of us to champion and promote human rights." Bonnie Abaunza, Director of Artists Relations, Amnesty International
"...These two bodies of work from Nepali Women and Girls and from Myrna Balk create a dialogue with each other, enabling us to hear he voices of these girls and women, and know the grief and realities of their lives. But it also shows us their hope and their spirit, their strength, especially by providing us a rare form of access to their experience. We see that though their language and contexts are different from ours in the United States, we are very much tied to
them, not only as victims of violence, but also as privileged members of the First World who help to create their victimization. The work illuminates this troubling paradox in our liveshopefully we can act upon it." *Mary Churchill, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies.
Reflecting on the work, well known human rights poet, Marjorie Agosin said: About M. Balks work: "The eloquence and authenticity of M. Balk's etchings capture in one
breath the sorrow and joy of these women¹s lives. An art that is compelling through its power of witness and naming."
About the work of the women and girls she wrote: The work of the Nepali women and girls reveals frailty as well as their compassionan art that captures the courage of shattered ves through gentle images. The work of these women and girls inspires us to look even more closelynot to abandon them."
There will be 16 photos in the show. Taken in the village by M. Balk in black and white and printed on warm tone fiber paper by Dana Mueller, Photography Faculty, Art Institute of Boston.
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