Your Comfort, My Silence
January 4- February 2, 2025

Society censors, rather than confronts, stories of rape and harassment. Rachelle Wunderink’s work unveils the consequences of sexual assault trauma by engaging viewers with the emotional affect. Incorporating influences from Affect Theory, Relational Aesthetics, and Trauma therapy, Wunderink’s site-specific exhibition for IA&A Hillyer, “Your Comfort, My Silence,” examines the ways that trauma lingers leaving lasting imprints on lives. She does this in three key ways throughout her body of work: ‘Blankouts,’ an immersive wheat-pasted installation, which looks at the covert ways in which society suppresses women’s stories of assault through the use of coded language and censorship. Secondly, ‘Trauma Embodied,’ looks at how the artist self-censors her own stories through a multi-layered editing process of nine different videos. Lastly, the artist activates the gallery space creating various modes of interaction with the work engaging her audience to consider the ways in which the work imprints on their own experiences.