FACING LUCRETIA
Facing Lucretia honours survivors of systemic racism, violence, rape, Indian Residential School, the Sixties Scoop, or other state interventions, as well as those who never made it home.
Facing Lucretia is inspired by the story of the rape of Lucretia, a major theme in European Art. Lucretia was an ancient Roman noblewoman who was blackmailed and raped by a guest to her home - the king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius (Tarquin). The next morning, Lucretia tells her story to her father, the chief magistrate of Rome, and to her husband. Despairing of the time the men are debating what to do, Lucretia cries out for vengeance, stabs herself in the heart and dies. Her rape and subsequent suicide so enraged the public that this triggered a revolution which precipitated the fall of the Roman monarchy and led to the formation of the Republic of Rome.