Sometimes it just hard to see the difference between who is the ex-prisoner and who is the advocate. The portraits reflect the complexity of the connections between truth and justice. The viewer needs to visually search and move to a position where the pieces of the image align to form a whole person, and in doing so, the image emerges as 3D. The imperfections mirror the human flaw of distinguishing perception and reality. Each woman has a different geometric shape that symolises an element of their identity. Christian crosses, Indigenous symbols or simply an emotion. The video below shows how the portraits reveal themselves when displayed.
The journey of the women in One Life, who are ex-prisoners, began long before they were charged. For some, their sentence extends well beyond their release. In some ways, many of those who work within the criminal justice system bear the weight of their own experiences and those who they advocate for.
