Blood Sisters in the Convent of the Good Shepherd, Magdalene Laundry by Rachael Romero, 28x22" mixed media drawing on paper.
Lillie and I did this because we felt we had become sisters in horror. Lillie had been taken from her mother to a mission, then The Pines.
She didn't remember where she was from. I didn't want to be from what I remembered.
--RR
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This work depicts the experience of the Australian-born, New York artist Rachael Romero, who at 14, in 1967, was sequestered, without charge and without legal trial, in the Convent of the Good Shepherd. ‘The Pines’, on Marion Road, North Plympton, SA, was one of nine commercial ‘Magdalene’ laundries across Australia in the 20th century. Romero recalls, “In this Dickensian throwback, our names were taken. Our identity was taken. We were shocked into an enforced silence and ‘trained’ to carry out dangerous drudgery. Offered no remuneration for such labour we were told to offer it up for the saving of souls in the ‘next life’ and therefore beautify our pitiful selves”.
Kerry Packer Civic Gallery, the Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, South Australia University, Adelaide, South Australia. September 5-October 3, 2014
Romero recallis her experience in an Australian Magdalene Laundry with Michael Secton for abc 7:30 Report
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-05/memories-of-the-magdalene-laundry/5724206
“What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.” --Jacques Derrida
The point of departure for my activist work comes from my own life experience. Always choosing media that can be widely disseminated, I burrow into my own corrosive secrets. Telling them from the inside out--Rachael Romero
Copyright Rachael Romero
Aftermath of Trauma by Rachael Romero