"Shame Radiant"

Todd Edward Herman

2021

Facilitating a survey-exhibit about our experiences with shame began by asking the questions: What can we learn about how we regulate, uphold or challenge social norms, hierarchies or transgressions when shame is activated? How can this powerful moral emotion turn inward, to ourselves, to our bodies, often catalyzing  self-harm, self-negation, self-reflection, self-evaluation as well as healing? 

A forum for such queries seems particularly relevant at a time when our respective relationships to a climate of amplified national and global conservatism, xenophobia, racism, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism have been significantly challenged.

I invited photographers, writers, visual artists, and non-artists from around the world to make work that collectively addressed their experiences with shame. The nearly 300 photographs, collages, drawings, and texts that were submitted in response look at deeply intimate, broadly political, emotional, physical, social, sexual, interpersonal, intergenerational, and institutional aspects of shame. 

“Shame Radiant” hopes to offer an opportunity for participants as well as viewers to explore more of the personhood and less of the pathology of our collective as well as our outlying experiences of shame.