Hidden in Plain Site: Creative Referendums to Human Trafficking
Artist Installations, temporarily sited in cargo containers, Angels Gate Park
April 26 – June 6, 2015

Artistic solutions, also known as creative referendums, developed by nine members of an Artist Team are framed within two cargo containers temporarily sited in Angels Gate Park overlooking the Port – an alluring metaphor given that some people smuggled into the US arrive in shipping containers.

Leah Solo

Sand Tray Play
Interactive Installation.

Solo invites the public to create an experience of “containment and freedom” from their unconscious, by playing with Barbie dolls and broken toys, to make their own visual tableau, within recycled packaging – discarded, then retrieved from the trash for a newly imagined use. Inspired by Free Barbie, Kwai Yong, China, by Eve Ensler, Solo tells the story of this Chinese girl who assembles only the heads of Barbie dolls. Other body parts are made in Taiwan and Japan. Solo is also inspired by Wassilasa, a Russian version of the Cinderella fairy tale about a young woman who learns about self-reliance – as opposed to a prince (or trafficker) who gives her life purpose (or controls her).

Proposed Referendum:
The real cost of some dolls, made by child labor, may be too high. Consider buying toys for children from local companies or those with fair labor practices.

Click here for Leah Solo and Marjan Vayghan artist bios.