Artist Catherine Daniels and WDHB community strategist Steve Carey with The Secret Keeper exhibition held at Whanganui Hospital last year.
Photo / Supplied
Artist Catherine Daniels and WDHB community strategist Steve Carey with The Secret Keeper exhibition held at Whanganui Hospital last year.
Photo / Supplied
A Whanganui artist's work will feature as testimony at a Royal Commission of Inquiry hearing next week.
Catherine Daniels' exhibition is a collection of her sculpted works and photographic images by her collaborator Esther Bunning.
Daniels became an artist when writing about the trauma and abuse she suffered as a child at home and at school became too hard.
Finding it too difficult to write about her experiences, she decided to make a sculpture to portray what she couldn't say in words, and the figures she went on to create formed the basis for her touring exhibition The Secret Keeper.
The collaboration with Bunning and Whanganui-based author and publisher Joan Rosier-Jones led to the publication of a book with the same name.
The exhibition and book resonated with Whanganui audiences when launched at the Community Arts Centre last year.
Whanganui District Health Board staff were so impressed by the exhibition that it was moved to Whanganui Hospital for a week-long showing for clinicians, patients, and visitors.
And next week Daniels and Bunning will take The Secret Keeper to Auckland where it will be shown alongside a Royal Commission Abuse in Care hearing in Auckland.
A four-minute video featuring images of Daniels' art as she talks about the fear that kept her from telling anyone about the abuse she suffered as a child until she was well into adulthood will be part of the hearing schedule.
"I really want to get it out there so people can tell their friends and family in Auckland to come along," said Daniels.
Pixelated Memories by Catherine Daniels and Esther Bunning is a finalist in the 2022 Parkin Drawing Prize competition.
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Daniels said through exhibiting her work she had realised how transformative her art has been for other survivors.
"People have asked me how I knew their story and I experienced the realisation that in expressing my own feelings, I had also helped them to find their voices.
"I isolated myself for a long time when I started sculpting and it was amazing to see how people reacted to my work and how it resonated with them. I didn't expect that but it has been amazing because it has allowed others to talk about abuse and trauma."
Some visitors to Daniels' exhibitions find her small hollow-eyed figures with sutured mouths disturbing while others want to embrace them.
Daniels calls them "the girls" and some also feature Disneyesque mouse ears. A collaborative work she created with Bunning entitled Pixelated Memories is a finalist for the Parkin Drawing Prize this year.
"I always loved Mickey Mouse," said Daniels.
"He saved my life when I was little as I became him and not me."
Daniels said there are thousands of adults and children afraid to speak about their abuse and some of her sculptures feature groups of small figures representing the extent of the silence.
"Finding the courage to speak about it breaks a cycle that prevents the harm from affecting current and future generations," she said.
The hearing next week will focus on the lived experiences of survivors who are disabled, Deaf, or were placed in psychiatric institutions. The Secret Keeper exhibition will be open to the public alongside the hearing which is scheduled to run from July 11 to 20, Level 2, 414 Khyber Pass Rd, Newmarket, Auckland.
