The exhibit, “Dust In Their Veins,” the powerful visual response to the global water crisis in many parts of the world, has been extended through May 31, 2013, at the DuSable Museum of African American History, an installation of mixed art works that bring discussion and action to the plight of women and children who are adversely affected by the lack of rights to clean water. Visual artist Candace Hunter has made it a mission of sorts to let Chicago and anyone who is interested know how serious a crisis these women and children face on a daily basis. –tony binns
How did you become interested in this project?
About three years ago it was brought to my attention this thing called “women and water rights,” and I did not know what that was because I am a child of Lake Michigan. I wanted to be in a show in Minnesota and that was what it was called so I had to figure out quickly what was this thing so I could create work. And so I started to do a little reading and then I did a little more reading … I quickly realized this is a real issue.
How many people are affected by this crisis?
More than a billion women and children around the globe.There are women who walk up to 10 miles a day to fetch water and that’s not clean water and then once they bring it back to their village they then have to sanitize the water, which means there is heat and more water to be used to clean water.
Who are these “billion” women and why should we, in Chicago, care?
You need water for absolutely everything, and so as I started doing the reading and research and looking at images, I quickly realized that this over a billion people affected were always people of melanin whether they are in Sub-Saharan Africa or Central America or India, they are dark people — they are me!
Briefly describe the exhibit.
There are 40 torsos that are headless and legless. Headless because the women who suffer the most do not have a voice in the international arena; the torsos are legless because these women and children do not have the ability to get up and walk away from their unique situation. Each torso is different. They might be collage, assemblage, words on it about who gets water; who does not, a lot of different messages and factoids which address numbers and percentages.
