ARTIST STATEMENT

For six decades, my feminist work has addressed issues of persecution and protection, focusing on oppression of the Other through the lens of anti-bullying and social justice.

Becoming aware of the arc of this work came slowly to me, beginning a year after running for an entire day from the falling Twin Towers in the Ground Zero area of Manhattan. It was only after being “displaced” from my Tribeca home for almost a year after 9/11, that I came to reflect upon my recurring childhood dreams of being chased by bad guys, and running for safety. I later created a video, RUNNING, highlighting this nightly fleeing from villains.

My abstract work after 9/11 became figurative, armor-like, and I realized that I was creating visual and visceral symbols of protection, androgynous sentinel-like figures to stand guard against the foe. I gradually incorporated a family of pop-culture and religious icons (Wonder Woman, Kannon, Princess Mononoke, Lisbeth Salander, Lady Gaga, Storm and Nausicaa) that could start conversations about issues of power and vulnerability.

I revisited my Profile (Below the Eyes) Series and the angst I felt in confronting my sexuality, and the ways that I was treated as an Other. My half-century of sketchbook diaries detailed the shame and hiding forced upon me by a society that made me lesser for my gender and my sexuality.

Gradually I was drawn to the Holocaust and then to global displacement in which factors of power and vulnerability led to the uprooting, eviction and genocide of entire populations. I developed an artistic craving to start a dialogue with my viewer about what it takes to be a hero on an everyday basis–an Upstander rather than a bystander.

While I dipped into my childhood experiences with Sexism and Masculinities/Femininities and played with unexpected gender permutations in Gender Scrambling, it was through the process of creating my Warrior Waging Peace series that I was able to transcend the lifetime experiences of bigotry directed to me.  

As the Sociologist Michael Kimmel has said: 

The arc of your story—and your art—may start in shame and hiding, but by armoring yourself against your detractors, particularly through your Body Swapping, Machete Blade, Knights and Warrior Waging Peace series, and calling forth the heroism detailed in your Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females series, you take the viewer and yourself on a journey celebrating Resilience, Strength and ultimately Triumph.

With my lectures, performances, videos, as well as HAWT's educational interactive website and national team of scholars, I find myself excited to interact with my audience, and cherish when a viewer or participant has an epiphany which expands Protector behavior and empathy toward the Other.

– Linda Stein, 2024