Using Art to talk back to Unwanted “Compliments”

 

Posters on a wall on Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, try to make the point that some comments to women aren’t welcome. “These things make you feel like your body isn’t yours,” the artist says. Posters on a wall on Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, try to make the point that some comments to women aren’t welcome. “These things make you feel like your body isn’t yours,” the artist says.

Shorty. Sweetie. Sweetheart. Baby. Boo. If you’re a woman, you’ve probably heard it.

If you were to respond, what would you say?

Last fall, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh began replying — through her art — to the dozens of men who approached her in public each week. As night fell, she slipped out of her Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment armed with a bottle of wheat paste, a couple of posters and a paintbrush, and began to pepper Brooklyn with messages:

“My name is not Baby.” “Women are not seeking your validation.” “Stop telling women to smile.”

Since September, Ms. Fazlalizadeh has plastered walls in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Clinton Hill and Williamsburg. As winter came and night temperatures dropped, though, she retired her paintbrush. “The wheat paste starts to freeze before it actually dries,” she said. “So the paper wasn’t holding.”

Continue reading the full article at the NYTimes Here!

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