Artist Statement

The Scales of Injustice

Colby Bernosky

My art piece is a painting called "THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE." It is a set of scales with 28 million in gray to show the number of people trapped in forced marriage; the 22 million represents those trapped in forced labor. The gray circles represent zeros for the millions of people, and the black circles are chains. The chains connect to a cracked Earth to show that if the people trapped in forced marriage and labor are not helped, it will destroy the world. The ring and pickaxe represent people trapped in marriage and forced labor. I chose to paint this because this would be the best way to express my theme.

My painting represents the fourth human right of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states "no slavery." In my research, I discovered roughly 50 million people are trapped in slavery worldwide, but it's not like it used to be. Many people are still forced to do hard labor, but most are trapped in forced marriage. Slavery and forced marriage are connected because the people in a forced marriage aren't allowed to leave or choose their spouse and are trapped just like slaves are. I also learned that many countries like Ethiopia try to hide their history involving slaves. I then discovered that many places did not officially abolish slavery until the 1900s! 

I hope that by looking at this painting, people will realize slavery isn't gone and needs to be addressed. While creating this, I learned that some countries still have lots of slavery that is covered up. Also, places like the U.S. ignore slavery in other countries like China because they want cheap imported goods. So the message I tried to convey through my art is that even though we think slavery is gone, it's not, and it needs to be fixed so everyone is free.