That Thing: Confronting Difficult Trauma

Society censors, rather than confronts, stories of rape and harassment. Rachelle Wunderinks thesis work unveils the consequences of sexual assault trauma by forcing viewers to engage with the emotional affect. 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 womens 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 eight different videos. Lastly, in Wunderinks thesis exhibition, That Thing: Confronting Difficult Trauma, 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.