Cloth and Iron Dresses: Reading Symbolic Reparation from Postwar Artworks That Address Gender Violence

Abstract

In this article, I investigate the methods and strategies that make postwar artworks of gender violence reparative by comparing two postwar artworks: “Thinking of You” created after the Kosovo conflict and the sculpture group in front of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. I argue that while both artworks address the systematic gender violence suffered by female victims in an armed conflict, the effect that the artworks have had on the audience and the victims are vastly different due to gendered factors. To illustrate the way in which these gendered factors impact the artists’ portrayal and the means through which they are manifested in the artworks, I use Rubio-Marín’s “Gender of Reparations” theory in considering how artwork’s portrayal of female victims succeeds or fails in providing reparation to the female victims of gender violence.