Juvana Soliven, instructor in the Sculpture and Expanded Practices area, is featured in a solo exhibition titled Safe Passage, at the Laboratory of Art and Form (LOAF) in Kyoto, Japan. The exhibition will run from December 16, 2023, through February 11, 2024.
The opposite side of the road. In groups. Mapping ways to well-lit walking paths — illuminating the unsafe reality of everyday conditions of being a woman. Pink train cars. Pink buses. Pink stalls. Pink outlines — demarcating a facade of safety that is constantly violated with impunity. The reality of patriarchal violence addressed by these accommodations of “safe spaces” contradicts what Safe Passage ought to mean. Expectations are placed on women to prepare and safeguard our selves from danger — which comes in conflict with the lack of expectation to disrupt an inherently violent culture unwilling to change. Safe Passage is a collection of objects and spaces that exist between security and vulnerability, tenderness and rigidity — armored spaces that reflect on the precariousness of a woman’s existence within a patriarchal society and the tenacity needed to persevere beyond it.