In 2018, Voices Against Violence served one thousand, five hundred five individuals in the Magic Valley [Idaho]. That is 1,505 individual human beings from the counties of Twin Falls, Jerome, Gooding, Minidoka, and Cassia who required services due to some kind of violence.

These are just the people who asked for help.

Each one of these tags represents one of those individuals. Just as each person receives personal attention, each tag has been hand-printed via the process of monoprinting on a gelatin plate, cut into a tag, and hand-stamped with a unique number.

Attendees are encouraged to buy a tag, or several. Pay what [they] want: $5, $10, $20. Each tag that disappears visibly and tangibly represents the impact we make when we intervene or interrupt violence. Each tag purchased directly supports the work of VAV. Every tag purchased demonstrates our commitment to ending violence in the Valley and tells a survivor “I believe you.”

Elle spent over 100 hours in the creation of this installation. She began with a large stack of brown paper bags reclaimed from her meal delivery subscription. She opened the seams and washed, dried, flattened each bag, and tore them into wide strips.

Each strip of paper was handprinted on a gelatin plate. Elle used five tints/shades of teal (representing sexual assault awareness) and five tints/shades of purple (representing domestic violence awareness). Elle used a diecutting machine to cut the stacks of paper into uniform tags. Each tag was hand-stamped with a unique number from ONE to ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED FIVE.

Finally, Elle pinned each tag, in order, to five pieces of foam-core poster board and displayed them at the pop-up gallery. The boards were given to Voices Against Violence as a visual display for their use after the completion of the gallery.