Download the thesis - South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault

life can be rejoined after a fracturing through loss. This concept offers hope that
meaning can be rediscovered after the loss of a loved one and through a period of
mourning. Like death, trauma reshapes one’s worldview; in the context of sexual
trauma, I suggest a grieving process reshapes a victim’s internal world to enable an
unfolding into a mainstream world.
Some mourning requires guidance, but unfortunately little specific guidance appears
available in grief or trauma texts to assist victims of sexual abuse through this period.
However, through sharing their visual language, artists are well placed to provide some
of the guidance needed to confront and express loss, and to then experience a
renewed sense of meaning and purpose. Doris Brett’s commentary that “the poem’s
mission is to go to the heart of grief, and to return with something even greater than
grief”, although not referring specifically to visual art-making, suggests the service art
can provide to mourning.
Community Acknowledgement of Trauma
Community acts of remembrance, such as war memorials and ceremonies that grow
out of tragedies such as the Port Arthur shootings and the 2009 Victorian Bushfires,
serve many purposes. They create a space for public acknowledgement, for receiving
affirmation that the pain and sorrow felt is an authentic and legitimate response.They
also offer an opportunity to receive public support and to give those not directly
involved the opportunity to share with the affected community. Many community acts
of remembrance are the result of small groups working passionately, but unofficially,
together to put form to experiences of trauma (Winter and Sivan). As Bennett (2005)
argues, this sort of response is an attempt to find a language that represents the
process of moving from individual suffering, the realm of traumatic memory, into a
place of social interaction (31).
Community acts of support and remembrance offer processes for meaning-making,
assist victims cope and find benefit in their circumstances and, in the longer term, can
act as a means of restructuring a view of life. They can assist victims and those
affected by trauma to understand that few situations are completely negative. James
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