“It is essential to debate it as a result of it is a battle crime. It is probably the most uncared for battle crime, however it’s a battle crime. It isn’t proper that in 2025 that is taking place everywhere in the world as we converse, in locations probably not that distant from the place we’re. And little or no is being performed about it.” Spoken by way of video within the first room of the a brand new exhibition on the Imperial Conflict Museum (IWM) in London, these are the phrases of The Sunday Instances’ chief worldwide correspondent, Christina Lamb.
Lamb has reported from battle zones world wide for 30 years, and is the creator of Our Our bodies, Their Battlefield: What Conflict Does to Girls, which explores the use and affect of sexual violence as a weapon of battle. She is due to this fact a becoming voice to introduce Unsilenced: Sexual Violence in Battle—the primary main UK museum present to discover this under-reported matter.
The exhibition, which has been six years within the making, takes place in opposition to a background of worldwide conflicts all through which the prevalence of sexual violence has been effectively documented. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine stories that within the interval 24 February 2022— when the Russia invasion of Ukraine started—to 31 August 2024, there have been 366 documented instances of battle associated sexual violence in opposition to males, girls and youngsters. And this isn’t a brand new phenomenon—Unsilenced explores tales of sexual slavery and humiliation from the “consolation girls corps” of the Second World Conflict to the prisoners of Abu Ghraib.
A Second World Conflict poster, enjoying on stereotypes of feminine sexual morality to warn that careless speak prices lives
© IWM (PST 13933)
Uncovering new narratives
For the IWM’s curatorial staff, bringing this emotionally fraught exhibition collectively revealed that, even throughout the museum’s collections, tales of sexual violence haven’t all the time obtained the eye they deserve. “It is a pervasive, devastating side of battle however it’s not talked about,” says Maeve Underwood, one of many present’s three curators. “That is in all probability mirrored within the museums accumulating over time—we have now collected these tales, however we’ve needed to re-examine our assortment to search out them.”
Uncovering these beforehand hidden narratives led curators to think about how finest to share them. New testimonies had been gathered from victims and survivors—all the time with their knowledgeable consent—by way of charities and NGOs. Discovering 3D objects immediately linked to the subject was not all the time straightforward, and so written and oral testimonies, images and artistic endeavors all play key roles.
In a room titled Representations, propaganda leaflets and posters relationship from the First World Conflict to the current day supply a pertinent reminder of the worth of visible communication in influencing public opinion. Brightly colored illustrations, taken from the IWM’s assortment and displayed in a brand new mild for Unsilenced, characterise males as fearless protectors of ladies who’re both loose-lipped and promiscuous or weak and virginal.
“These stereotypes or norms which can be represented will not be innocent—they trickle down and are recreated in different methods,” explains the curator Helen Upcraft. “Sexual violence doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”
Curators complimented photographs of les tondues from the IWM’s assortment with works by Lee Miller, who adopted a extra compassionate method to documenting their punishmentsPicture from the IWM assortment © IWM (B 10366)
Utilizing artwork to depict atrocity
Elsewhere within the exhibition, artistic endeavors change into important historic paperwork. Images by the pioneering image-maker Lee Miller seize the experiences of les tondues (the shaved ones)—French girls who had been accused or discovered responsible of collaborating with German forces, and whose heads had been subsequently shaved as punishment. There aren’t any recognized interviews with these girls—nor any report of why they dedicated the crimes of which they had been accused—making these photographs vitally essential proof of gender-based humiliation.
Newly acquired by the IWM for Unsilenced is a miniature Sonyeosang or Statue of Peace, copied from a bronze created in 2011 by the husband-and-wife sculptor duo Kim Web optimization-kyung and Kim Eun-sung. The unique work sits exterior the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, the place it commemorates the experiences of so-called “consolation girls”—girls, largely from Korea, who had been compelled into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces throughout the Second World Conflict. Different replicas of the work can now be present in Japan, US, Australia and Germany, the place they exemplify the flexibility of such monuments to contribute to each remembering and therapeutic.
The empty chair symbolises the “consolation girls”, now typically often called halmoni, who’ve died
A miniature Sonyeosang. © IWM (EPH 11993)
Maybe the exhibition’s most arresting object is a portray by the South African artist Albert Adams. Taken from the IWM’s assortment, the summary, twisted work responds to the torture of Abu Ghraib inmates by the USA Military and the Central Intelligence Company throughout the Iraq Conflict. It’s in some methods stunning to see these abuses, so typically related visually with the handful of harrowing images first revealed by The New Yorker in 2004, represented on this means.
“It is simply one other means of showcasing to individuals which you could have interaction with this matter in many alternative methods,” Upcraft says. “When there’s little or no pictures or filming taking place, how else do you depict what’s taking place? Artwork is a crucial means of depicting these atrocities.”
Curating amid ongoing battle
Depicting atrocities is, in fact, nothing new to the IWM, however does curating an exhibition round such a reside problem deliver with it new challenges? Because the present factors out, the battle in Ukraine makes displaced kids all of the extra susceptible to sexual violence. And, within the ongoing Israel-Palestine battle, mass sexual violence has been reported by either side. Is such a fancy and probably politically charged problem, historically mentioned in worldwide courts extra typically than cultural areas, squarely throughout the nationwide museum’s remit?
“I really feel that it fully suits into our remit,” Underwood says. “Sexual violence shouldn’t be typically talked about and it has been occurring eternally. The dialog has to begin someplace, and I feel that is our contribution to that significant change that all of us need.”
• Unsilenced: Sexual Violence in Battle, Imperial Conflict Museum, London, 23 Might-2 November
