The Choices that we Choose - September 2005

In September 2005, the Waterford Healing Arts Trust facilitated an issue-based exhibition in the foyer of Waterford Regional Hospital. The Choices that we Choose was an interactive project that explored the fragility of human existence amidst a fast changing global culture. It specifically engaged with the issues of solitude, isolation and lack of contact which in extreme cases can be expressed through self inflicted harm and suicide.

Artist Juliana Walters’ work sought to recognise the reality of how individuals increasingly come to a point where they feel they have no other choice but to physically injure and damage themselves. This work addresses this fact, which, in 2003, caused some 11,200 people to attempt suicide and some 440 to commit suicide in Ireland, giving us the highest rate in Europe.

“In an effort to express the gravity of these statistics and to overcome the taboo surrounding this subject, I felt it was necessary to invite the public to assist and actively participate in its making”, says Juliana.

The public were invited to make a fingerprint on a canvas, with each being a personal and unique physical mark representing a proof of presence and life rather than an absence of self worth.

Juliana’s completed work toured throughout Ireland.