WHAT

Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art is a multi-media contemporary art exhibition that promotes awareness and fosters dialogue about violence against women and its effects on victims, families, and communities. The exhibit features 28 international artists, including Yoko Ono, Louise Bourgeois, Wangechi Mutu, Mona Hatoum and Hank Willis Thomas.

WHEN

June 6 - September 9, 2011

WHERE

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Harkin Global Communications Center
1600 Clifton Road NE
Atlanta, GA 30329

BACKGROUND

Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art is a touring exhibition produced by Art Works for Change, a nonprofit organization that addresses social and environmental issues. The exhibition premiered in Oslo, Norway in June 2009 and traveled to San Diego, Tijuana, Mexico City and Chicago in subsequent years. This Atlanta presentation is co-sponsored by the Division of Violence Prevention in the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Global Health Odyssey Museum.

CDC has applied a public health approach to violence prevention since the 1980s. Violence directed towards women and girls is a global human rights injustice with severe health and social consequences.

Off the Beaten Path challenges traditional ideas about gender based violence and helps create a new conversation on the full spectrum of issues that surround this important topic. The hope is that audiences leave the exhibition with a better understanding of the roots of abuse, a feeling of empathy, and an awareness of choice in their actions and beliefs. Reflecting deeply and thoughtfully on these issues, the artists in this exhibition offer images and stories as profoundly universal and creative responses that illuminate our perceptions and call us to action.

"Around the world, women and girls are victims of countless and senseless acts of violence," says Randy Jayne Rosenberg, executive director of Art Works for Change and the exhibit's curator. "In many of these instances, they are victims simply because they are female. How do we get off the 'Beaten Path?' How do we create a world where all people are secure and where women's rights are seen fully and finally as human rights?"