Installation in Silenced Voices: an Affirmation of Human Rights, SPACES, Cleveland, OH, June 5 – July 30, 1999
22 hand-painted bibs
In the spring of 1998, the first twenty-two Rwandan Hutus convicted of participating in the slaughter of 1994 were wearing white bibs with black squares painted to locate the sternum. They were executed by firing squad in public at a one-meter range. The United Nations, which set up its own court in Tanzania to judge those suspected of genocide, has yet to deliver a single verdict.* The minority Tutsis, backed by the West, led a repressive government for decades before their overthrow which led to the genocide. The black squared bibs here serve as the remembrance of myriad moral stains we nightly (take to) table.
*Alfonso Rojo in Kigali from a Manchester Guardian Weekly article of May 3, 1998