New City – In Conversation with Whitney Bradshaw on the Exhibition “Outcry”

Distorted expressions of agony, rage and release line the walls one after the other. Mouths open mid-howl. Teeth gnashed mid-growl. The faces of women. The bodies and souls of women. Complexions crumpled, folded and twisted. These are not influencer, face-tuned faces with perfectly plumped lips. They are real expressions of real anger. They are the faces of our mothers, sisters, aunts and friends—the expressions of more than half the population.

Part-time curator of the Lubeznik Center for the Arts and former curator of the LaSalle Bank Photography Collection of twelve years, Whitney Bradshaw’s “Outcry” project includes more than 500 photographs of women, some of whom are sexual-assault survivors, and it’s still growing. The latest iteration at the Epiphany Center for the Arts in Chicago will have a selection of photographs out of the 500 on display. A sexual assault survivor and survivor of incest, Bradshaw worked in social services like Resilience (once called Rape Victim Advocates) when she was twenty-one-years old. At that time, she tells me, she was on-call for fourteen inner-city Chicago hospital emergency rooms for sexual-assault survivors prior to her starting the project “Outcry.”

 

Bradshaw speaks to me about how she would stay with the survivors through the excruciating, invasive rape kits (a sixteen-step process involving the gathering of evidence off of the survivor’s body) and the conversations with police, doctors and nurses. “Sometimes I would go back to the scene of the crime with an investigator and survivor. I would [even] go to the police department with [survivors] for line-ups,” says Bradshaw. During that time, she and others received training to know how to aid survivors in crisis. “It was the first time I was in a space where I felt scared, [but] I felt like I was coming out in a way, and I decided to tell my story in a space full of strangers,” Bradshaw explains that she was really heard, supported, believed and held in that space. “I felt witnessed… and it really changed my life,” she says. After having that experience, Bradshaw had always wanted to recreate that kind of space for others and incorporate visual art as well. “Once [Trump] was running I started thinking I should really start a project where I get groups of people together who don’t know each other, who have experienced the world through a femme body at some point—[I was] open to non-binary and trans women, as well as cis women,” she says “I was so irate that half the country was going to vote for someone who was a predator, an outspoken misogynist, racist, homophobic… on and on. I was enraged like so many people.” She wanted to create a space where people could come together and let out their anger and their rage over this particular human, but also have it be a space where people can share stories that have been silenced.

In the aftermath of the 2016 elections, when Trump was elected president, Bradshaw held her first “Outcry” session following the historical Women’s March in 2018. A mix of neighbors and friends, Bradshaw created a pilot of the transformative gathering. “Everybody ended up sharing stories, whether it was sexual assault or sexual harassment… we were all there listening to each other, supporting each other,” she says, “It was a blast, but also a lot of tears and a lot of connection. We all really connected on a deep level. We practiced screaming together, and then people got in front of the camera, and added to things they wanted to say.”

The exhibition at the Epiphany Arts Center consists of photographs depicting women-identifying/femmes in mid-rage or anguish expressions, but that’s only part of a larger, more extensive mission, one that is not shown… yet. (Both she and “Outcry” are the subject of a documentary film titled “Outcry: Alchemists of Rage,” directed by Clare Major, currently in post-production, and the film better depicts what happens during these transformative sessions.) Bradshaw conveys a more important calling, one that happens during “Outcry” sessions. I ask Bradshaw to go deeper into how the sessions are run, and she explains that everybody has an opportunity to scream alone or scream with the support of the group. “You never have to scream alone,” she tells me. “It ends up being this miraculously supportive space.”

These sessions and their photographic results have the ability to change lives. They hold space for moments of deep, emotional connection surrounding sexual assault, sexual violence and sexual harassment, a subject that too often gets talked over or shoved aside. “Outcry” is just that, a cry out of desperation, torment and release because of horrific encounters, yes, but it’s also a concatenation of radical support and sustained encouragement. Bradshaw tells me that after someone participates they are indoctrinated into a collective of others who have completed the sessions, with an ongoing newsletter and connective network for anyone who needs it. “That’s part of the project. People who have had similar experiences—who support you—can listen to your story, and maybe it’s a story that’s been silenced by your community, your family or both,” Bradshaw says.

Bradshaw is a mother, artist, activist, educator, curator and former social worker. Her work has been shown at institutions such as the DePaul Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and the Berkeley Art Museum—to name a few. She has been published in Ms. Magazine, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Vogue. This past fall Bradshaw was named one of Newcity magazine’s Art 50.

In our society, women are so often sexualized, or expected to uphold a certain image of socially constructed “femininity” in demeanor or countenance. These images, when faced with hundreds, are eye-opening. You can feel your skin tingle and crawl as you gaze at furrowed brows, tightly closed eyes and mouths mid-scream. There’s a sensation of penetrating collective grief. They say a “picture’s worth a thousand words,” but these are worth a thousand memories. Countless caches of pain, profound grief and of course—indignation, injustice and outrage.

Bradshaw’s hope is that with these images others will come forward, share their story and be empowered and emboldened. There is power in collective grief. There is power in healing, knowledge and numbers. There are thousands upon thousands of these stories—if we rise up, maybe we can stop new ones from forming.

“Outcry” is on view at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, from August 10 through September 28.  Bradshaw and “Outcry” are the subject of a documentary film titled “Outcry: Alchemists of Rage,” directed by Clare Major that screens at Facets on August 14.