VCA exhibit offers chance to help Nigerian girls

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, February 16, 2022

“Face Value,” an exhibition of artwork by Marita Dingus, currently on view at Vashon Center for the Arts, includes an installation of 112 small handmade Nigerian girls, representing the young women who are still missing or dead from the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping in Nigeria.

In April 2014, members of the jihadist group Boko Haram ambushed an all-girls boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria in the middle of the night and kidnapped 276 female students, ages 16-18, before vanishing into the forest.

In recognition of this atrocity, Dingus created her “Nigerian Girls” installation with 200 dolls, in 2014. Since that time, many of the girls have found their way home, including more returning home as recently as 2021. However, as of 2022, eight years after the kidnapping, more than 100 girls’ whereabouts are still unknown.

VCA has presented this installation to bring awareness of the girls still missing and the continued terrorism the Boka Haram inflicts with the abduction of young women and men in parts of Nigeria.

Now, VCA —in collaboration with Marita Dingus and Traver Gallery (which represents Dingus) — is donating $20 for each Nigerian Girl sold, to Borno Women’s Development Initiative (BOWDI).

BOWDI, a non-governmental organization, is a movement to educate and train girls and women, especially in those areas affected by insurgent attacks. Living in areas with unstable living conditions, violence, and many in refugee camps, these women and girls are without education or relevance. BOWDI is focused on supporting and empowering these women and girls with classroom education, health education and skills training. Learn more about the organization at bowdi.org or visit the group’s Facebook page, Borno Women.

VCA offers the dolls as items for islanders to place in their homes or sacred spaces, in remembrance of the ongoing atrocities inflicted on girls and women, and in the hope that they will find their way home.

For your purchase, VCA invites visitors to select one of the dolls, and take it home right away, with the hope the number of missing dwindles as each doll finds a home. And as the dolls find their new home, the organization holds onto the hope that the remaining missing young women will also find their way home.

VCA thanks islander Kirsten Gagnaire, founder of Kati Collective (katicollective.com) for her advice and support in the selection of BOWDI as the recipient of the funds.

The Nigerian Girls and Dingus’ full exhibition of art — a collection of mixed media sculptures of figures made with discarded trash, found objects and hand-painted faces, reflecting the totality of the Black American experience — will remain on view at VCA through Feb. 27.

Gallery hours are 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The show is also viewable online, at gallery.vashoncenterforthearts.org.