Can Visual Art Intensify the Existential Debate on Genocide? With Reproductions of Several Art Works

Editor's Note: This touching essay, accompanied by reproductions of several works, and concluded with a moving "kind of biography " touch the heart of the reader with the author's pain and sensitivity to her own and to all of our human suffering, and touches the reader's mind with basic questions about artistic representations of genocide. Can visual art intensify and deepen the necessary debate on genocide prevention? For good reasons the question is mainly met by hesitation. Art is generally known to act only within its own field of force. But a journey of experience as a visual artist has taken me to the conviction that in some cases, in some ways, to a certain degree, it eventually can. I promised in the last issue of GPN Genocide Prevention Now to account more in details for this journey connected to two works in my production, The Reference Scroll on Genocide, Massacres and Ethnic Cleansing from 2004, and the series of multimedia drawings Bystander on Probation from 2007. I start with what so far represents a terminal of the journey, the 18th Biennale of Sydney in Australia, for which the latter work was selected. The series was exhibited between 27th of Jun