This week, justArts had a conversation with Zuri Gordon '15, who is the president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, about an event during the group's programming for Sexual Violence Awareness Week.

JustArts: Can you tell me a little about the history of the clothesline project and how [the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance] adopted it?

Zuri Gordon: This is our second Sexual Violence Awareness Week and last year was the first year that we started it, and The Clothesline Project was the last event in the [Shapiro Campus Center] Atrium so we decided to do it again this year.

I know that The Clothesline Project was started in Cape Cod in the '90s. It was about creating T-shirts that have slogans about gendered violence and about how to end it, combat it-T-shirts that had belonged to women who had been victims of this, [they said] things about these women and how to protect them. They were hung on a clothesline. And there were a lot of rules about the sort of ceremony that you would have for it and I know that the Boston Rape Crisis Center also has one up as well.

To do it in the Atrium as part of our week, we provided T-shirts and provided paints and clothespins and lots of information about the project and so people who participated could just get a T-shirt and write something about rape culture or gendered violence and they're hung up down stairs.

JA: Can you tell me about what you think about the importance of public art, since the T-shirts are hung in the SCC and people can walk by and see them?

ZG: FMLA has done some public art before. We had some burning bras a few years ago for Feminist Action Week. And I guess with something like feminism which not everybody understands or thinks is that important, something like art, which everyone can participate in and everyone can understand, is a way to make feminism accessible to people and make them understand how it affects their lives.

[With] burning bras we had a big sign explaining what they meant. But for the T-shirts, they're pretty self-explanatory... and [people] can come to the SCC and see them and read the slogans like "End Rape Culture at 'Deis," "Brandeis Loves Consent;" one said "Ask First."

So women or just survivors in general who have been affected by gender violence and sexual violence who didn't really participate in this week's events can see the shirts in the SCC and understand how feminism affects them or that there is a movement to advocate or support them.

JA: What do you think the people who participated in creating the shirts got out of it?

ZG: I think that Sexual Violence Awareness Week, just as the series of events that happens on campus, can be really heavy and hard to go to.

I've done this sort of activism all my time at Brandeis and it can be really overwhelming sometimes ... This is the last event of [Sexual Violence Awareness Week] and it's something that's more creative and interactive and you're not getting horrible statistics or feeling hopeless about something. And you're just making a craft to get your thoughts out about sexual violence and how you want to combat [it] and how it's affected you or someone you know.

I think that as the last event of a really long week of important events it's a way to be part of the series of events that doesn't take so much out of you ... This is a way to participate that doesn't make you feel like there is no end.

JA: Do you hope to do The Clothesline Project next year, or expand it?

ZG: I definitely hope that with FMLA, Sexual Violence Awareness Week continues to happen with different events throughout the week but I definitely think that the clothesline project should always a part of it and I hope that it is again next year.