Patterns in Silence (2006)

A site-specific exhibition of sculptural work shown at the Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill, as part of the national campaign “16 Days of Activism”

“Silence is tantamount to an admission that there is something very wrong.”

(A Basic Talmudic principle)

Patterns in Silence provides a backdrop for an exploration into the inconsistencies that inevitably exist between everyday social realities for South African women and a constitutional ideal. The body of work seeks to visually interrogate social and psychological factors associated with gender-based violence.

McInnes works with kitchen knives, scissors, salt, copper sheeting, lead and steel. The work avoids the use of sensational material, preferring instead to rely on metaphor to provide a backdrop against which topics that are notoriously difficult can be exposed. The work is less about the abusive situations than it is about the silences that inevitably shroud such topics.