Respect
By Rachel Turney
Artist’s Statement
I am an educator who works in two roles. I coach and supervise new teachers and teach immigrants and refugees. Education as a general theme influences my work. I write a lot about my childhood, which I call suburban dramatic. It is a rose: alluring, sweet, but thorned. Growing up in the Midwest, and now living in the beauty of Colorado, shapes my view and interactions with society. I have also lived, worked, and traveled abroad a fair amount over the last twenty-five years. This influence is particularly clear in my visual pieces. Passionate love for my spouse is a new theme of much of my work. That goes along with sexual freedom and pride in body image, which are important causes to me. The most crucial and prevailing lens and reach of my work is based on my identity as a woman and urgent protectorship of other women globally. I took this photograph in the Khan Market in Delhi in 2019. I captured this sign because I found the representation of women striving to gain respect relatable, a global struggle. My understanding of why the Venus symbol is inverted may be two fold. First, it may represent the lack of balance between the masculine and feminine. The second is that the inversion may be a signal to include other marginalized communities. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have more knowledge of this particular symbol’s use within India. These are my conjectures after some research, but have not been sufficiently verified nor validated—@turneytalks on Instagram.
Rachel Turney is an educator in Colorado. Her poems and prose are published in The Font Journal, Red Rose Thorns, Ranger, Through Lines, Blink Ink, Bare Back, The Hooghly Review, and Teach Write Journal. Her photography appears in San Antonio Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Prosetrics, Vagabond City, Dipity, and Ink in Thirds Magazine. Her artwork appears in Cosmic Daffodil. Blog: turneytalks.wordpress.com. Instagram: @turneytalks
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