As a child, I remember walking down Broadway in downtown Los Angeles and passing by newsstands that seemed to be in every corner of the street. These newsstands mostly carried imported magazines, comic books, and novellas from Mexico. The novellas usually had scenes of domestic disputes or violence. In my project, Until the Day Breaks and Shadows Flee, I explore the issue of domestic violence via the novella imagery- it seemed fitting to me, since the exhibition space lies inside a house, to address the home’s biggest ill. My use of appropriated imagery from the novella, the omission of the text and my deliberate displaced chronological order of the narratives, allows the viewer to navigate through the imagery to form their own causes and conclusions.

The project also consists of t-shirts with text and imagery created by domestic violence survivors of the Five Acres Grace Center in Pasadena, California. Through imagery and text, these women express themselves and use the t-shirts as therapeutic tools to process their challenging circumstances. My hope is that the project would generate dialogue and awareness about this ever-present problem. In addition, I have included on the outside windows the color purple, the color associated with domestic violence awareness. The month of October, the month the exhibition opens, is domestic violence awareness month.