npr:
NEWSHOUR ART BEAT: Video artist, MacArthur fellow Mary Reid Kelley on recovering history’s lost narratives
Kelley works with her partner Patrick Kelley to create films that attempt to fill in the gaps between established facts, often telling the stories of people on the margins of history books. “I am very interested in people who do not, for some reason or other, tell their own stories, or can’t tell their own stories,” Kelley told the NewsHour. Kelley plays all of the characters as they face the challenges that come with moments of intense societal change — a struggle that resonates with the present day. But to talk to Kelley about her work is to wander with her through history.
Researching World War I led Kelley to the stories of sex workers who had staffed popular brothels for soldiers during the war. Kelley said she encountered no testimony from the women who survived those brothels, a gap in recorded history that “shocked and really disappointed” her, Kelley said.
But then she realized: “If you had survived that experience, no one would think it was a valuable experience. The best thing that could happen to you would be to go somewhere and have nobody ever realize that it happened to you. … It would have damaged their lives to say it. This happens to a lot of women now, who suffer sexual violence.”
Her work is seriously so beautiful. -Ariel