I chose to change my name to Skye because I wanted to mark the point in my life where I left the dysregulated style of my previous life and be able to embrace my artist-self without being shamed. Skye Cheung
Skye Cheung Ai meu rico filho 14x10 inches watercolour 2024
Sometimes, more than ever,
it’s necessary to go back to before. And, paradoxically, when it comes to the inevitability of violence in the patriarchal hierarchy, those who have been victimized have no choice but to go back to before if they want to move forward. However, this no-choice, and having the courage to acknowledge and embrace it, is a strength, what Mexican feminist Sayak Valencia rallies for as “making pain political.” As a major tenant of my book, Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor, when we have lived through pain, we have a visceral knowledge of what is wrong and what must be revolutionized in order to be an active part of ending the cycle of violence.
Chinese Canadian artist Skye Cheung has embarked upon such a journey. Having lived through approximately ten years of domestic abuse by her male spouse, she was able to act on the fact that she had no choice but to leave. However, in order to have this courage, she needed to finally feel all that had come before, all that had been repressed. This awareness of no choice is not a negative: it is the awakening to the necessity of extricating ourselves from personal pain.
I think it’s safe to say that, in patriarchy, all men who abuse power do so to avoid the threat of —and, for those in underprivileged and exploited contexts, escape—emasculinization. As extreme cases, Valencia writes about the ‘endriago’ subject (a fabulous monster), the male of the so-called third world who, through the throes of neoliberalism and its ruthless forces of global capitalism, is born of precarity where his economic disenfranchisement denies him access to the power flaunted by a world of hyper-consumerism. The endriago subject—or the “damaged macho”—takes the power denied him in patriarchy through extreme violence (cartel members are the most obvious examples of this) and become absolutely enslaved by “the masculinist logic of defiance and the struggle for power.”[1] Correspondingly, feminist activist and scholar Silvia Frederici writes how: “[i]t is no accident that we find the most unsophisticated machismo in the working class family: the more blows the man gets at work the more his wife must be trained to absorb them, the more he is allowed to recover his ego at her expense. You beat your wife and vent your rage against her when you are frustrated or overtired by your work or when you are defeated in a struggle.”[2]
However, Skye’s ex-husband is neither of the third world nor of the working class. Far from struggling in a state of precarity that is responsible for Valenica’s brutal macho, Skye’s abuser has a good job and lives a comfortable life in a city with one of the highest standards of living in the world. And yet, as we will see, bringing the paradigm of third world gendered precarity into a context that appears to be exempt from such horrors provides a template through which we can analyze all levels of male power abuse in patriarchy as a system that demands his grandeur and creates monsters when this is denied. Skye’s ex-husband’s toxification is a psychological precarity that all men in patriarchy, regardless of access to power, are subjected to. This is certainly not to excuse power abuse on an individual level; rather, it is to explain its source on the systemic. Nothing can be remedied unless we know where and how it comes from.
But there is a twist in this particular tale of power abuse in patriarchy: the woman was not the primary object of abuse. This is not to say that Skye was not directly abused by her ex-husband; however, the main target of his emotional and physical abuse was his autistic son. As a ‘disabled’ male in a male supremacist culture, the son doesn’t measure up to what it means to be a ‘man.’ This was not the abuse of husband to wife, of male upon female: it was the abuse of father to son, where the abuser lashed out at his own inherent vulnerability as a human through what he perceived as a weak and imperfect male that he had created. The father, the abuser, was connected to and was reminded of this connection to weakness every day. His son, his progeny, is a ‘non-man’ male, and, as such, the father became a damaged macho of the first world, lethal in his state of psychological and emotional precarity in patriarchy.
Skye:
I came home from work and my house was in complete disarray. It was like when a thief goes through your house and everything's all over the place. But my son was home, when he has tantrums sometimes he will pull books from the shelves and break things. But he had never gone through the entire house like this. Usually, it's just isolated to his room.
I was trying to be calm. What's going on? He told me that he had a tantrum because his bus driver gave him a box of cookies. But because he has allergies to gluten and dairy, he couldn't eat them. So he was upset.
He was so upset that he had torn up the whole house. I was calm. It was like, okay, let's take a break. After he had told me all this and we went through the story and calmed down and said, let's start to clean up. So we did. And he was wearing a hoodie. Um, and as he bent down to pick stuff up, I saw the back of his neck was completely bruised. And the bruises were like fingerprints. All around his neck. And I realized that his dad, who was downstairs in his office, had strangled him.
We have found that a lot of this trauma has come out over the years and he's now able to verbalize it and actually write about it. He's written letters telling us that he was tied up with plastic zip ties when he was younger. His father had tied his wrists, his feet and just left him there. This came out in therapy. I was totally shocked.
Lockdown. An Escape.
In 2020, at the height of Covid 19 lockdowns internationally, Skye was still with her ex-husband and, horrifyingly, as with so many other women around the world who were confined in small spaces with abusers and the rate of domestic violence and femicide sky-rocketed,[3] Skye was in lockdown with him. I asked her to describe this experience.
Karen Moe: What was it like being in lockdown with him? You say that this time also gave you time to think and realize you weren’t happy with your life (even though you were in a confined space with the abuser). How did this work? Was it a pressure cooker that you finally had time to really feel and acknowledge?
Skye Cheung: Being in lockdown forced me to confront the scarcity in my home. Although I lived in abundance with respect to resources such as money and possessions, they meant nothing compared to the emotional debt we had acquired. I was repulsed by how rigid and contemptuous we had become as a family. There was an absence of caring and community. I’m a teacher and I no longer had respite in leaving the home and going to teach where I was seen and heard. Living in fear of myself and my children's wellbeing became a constant. The moment to leave an abuser had been put on hold for so long because I had convinced myself that staying was better for my children, but being in lockdown made me realize that life is short. Not only was leaving better for all of us but it rejected the need for validation from society and my traditional Asian family. It was my first true step into Feminism.
*
Skye Cheung Isolation II watercolour and ink on cotton paper 10x14 inches 2022
She started to paint the sky
While Skye was in lockdown she began to plot her escape; she began to connect with what she calls ‘physical’ nature that has become her source of strength. Paradoxically, locked down in an urban apartment, there was no access to the literal physicality of nature, so Skye began to paint the sky, the only nature that any person in lockdown had access to (if they had a window with a view, that is). For a person also trapped in an unflinching state of domestic abuse, it is the infinity embodied by the sky that offers—and is the only opportunity for—emotional and psychic escape.
*
KM: What is sky to you, both emotionally, intellectually and painterly?
SC: The sky represents peace and calm for me. I feel my heartbeat slow when I look out my window and a sense of poetic and spiritual subtlety. Intellectually, the sky is a visual for meditation and has aided my healing from trauma. The practice of representing the sky in my work has been a steady repetitive process that I would say is not all that different from crafts such as knitting. Inside that repetition is a chance for thriving and moving forward and ultimately healing.
*
And so, the artist brought the wide-open sky into the confines of her entrapment and, unwittingly, psychically, painting this liberation over and over, she plotted her escape through her art.
The sky gave the artist what can be considered the most healing and liberating gift of all: Beauty. Water colour works on cotton paper, Skye’s skies are alive with the emotion of the artist’s, of the human’s, watching. The water and pigment is absorbed by and unites with the universe of its paper, greys brighten as miracles of blues that deepen into the beginnings of black; the artist lovingly interprets the infinity of cloud formations. Despite the turmoil of the artist’s life outside of her art, there is absolute peace in these paintings. And, as a final gift from the sky, from herself, are lines and flecks of gold gild, exquisite promises that the paintings will come true.
Skye Cheung Isolation I watercolour and ink on cotton paper 10x14 inches 2022
Water: suicide and the revolution of a dream.
Before the revelations she had in lockdown, Skye had left and, like so many women in abusive relationships, ended up going back. It so often takes more than one act of courage to leave abuse absolutely. However, in order to go back when in your gut you know it is wrong, one must repress the truth, what they had acted on and then, for so many reasons, reneged.
Skye:
Well, this is the thing, I ended up going back. We had Christmas Eve dinner at my place, like planned. And, my family walked in, my parents, my in-laws, everyone. And it was like the only thing that was talked about was my mother-in-law whispering in my ear: “Please forgive him.” Everything else was swept under the rug, and I went along with it.
And then two days later, we went away. As a family on a cruise with my parents. And again, it was just like life goes on and we're not going to talk about this. That was the understanding. There was so much stress inside me. On New Year's Eve, in combination of the expectation of being on vacation with your family and having fun and pretending nothing's wrong, I broke. I wanted to jump off the balcony because I thought, this will end my pain. The ocean will end my pain if I jump off the balcony. I stood on the top of the railing. My daughter opened the curtain and screamed. I looked at the waves and I thought: this is the only thing that is going to end the pain.
The only reason why I didn't jump was because he grabbed me.
Skye Cheung Awakening encaustic on board 10X 8 inches 2021
Skye started to paint water.
KM: What is water to you, both emotionally, intellectually and painterly?
SC: Water is the yang to the sky's yin. To me, the sky is an epic journey and water is the short-lived climax points in life. Water is unpredictable and drives my desire to play and experiment. It has the power to motivate me to make impulsive decisions, fuel my wanderlust and get me out of my comfort zone. In my painting, water provides dissonance and experimentation. Asian culture is deeply rooted in balance. The water and sky create a sense of balance because, while I believe in maintaining peace in my life, I also desire to play and challenge myself.
*
The water paintings are encaustics, a process of pouring wax onto board. The demarcations are rough, rapid etchings made as the drying wax forces the artist to work quickly. “With encaustic, you can’t control the outcome much,” Skye told me. One must be open to the random, swirls, gouges, and dents that are all a part of the life of the artwork, and the lived life of the artist as they embed immediate emotion into the wax.
Like living with and through violence, Skye explained to me how both water-colour and encaustic are difficult to control and the artist must allow themselves to be wide open to the possibilities contained in uncertainty. Yes, when in an abusive relationship there is the uncertainty of not knowing when violence will erupt again; but there are also the liberating uncertainties, the possibilities for another way of being along with the courage it takes to embrace that inevitability that can be practiced through the process of creation.
The steady, repetitive process of painting water and sky, freed the truth she had repressed and the need for escape that she had denied in order to go back. Eventually, the psyche took hold and she re-dreamt the suicide attempt, a dream that was as real as the paintings she had created and could touch. Skye told me, “When I tried to talk to my abuser about this, he responded, "Oh, that thing that happened so long ago?" His long-ago had only been two years. “I knew at that moment I had to leave,” she said. Again.
Skye Cheung Rebirth encaustic on board 48x36 inches 2021
Implied Consent
SC: I see a lot of connection between your experiences of sexual assault as well, Karen. When you were abducted, the rapist had you for almost 24 hours, raped numerous times and then also being given the date rape drug when you were nineteen and raped and impregnated by two men. It's not the same thing, of course, but the process and the trauma and this, like feeling like it's your fault.
KM: Yes, they’re different manifestations of the same beast. I realized when I was writing my book Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor, if I’d had my own trial in 1996, I would have been blamed; a man who ended up being a serial rapist and potential murderer, would have gotten off because I was not a ‘good’ victim. I didn’t follow the protocols because the way I escaped was that I never once said ‘No.’ That’s how I got away and was instrumental in his life sentence. However, if I’d had my own trial (you can read about it in my book!), the crimes against me would have been excused as “implied consent.” As I write, “I would have been re-traumatized for saving my own life.”[4]
*
For a rape victim to be deemed credible, she must endure police interrogation when in a raw state of recent traumatization. She will be questioned over and over if she had said ‘No’ and if she had said it clearly enough for the rapist to hear (what an extreme example of male impunity). If it is deemed that she hadn’t said ‘No’ clearly enough for the rapist to know that she obviously doesn’t want to be raped (who does!), the crime will be designated as ‘unfounded’ because the victim’s inability to succinctly inform the predator (while being brutalized, lest we forget) was an act of “implied consent.” In Canada and the US in 2019, the sexual assault laws technically eliminated such ridiculous legislations as "implied consent." However, journalist Robyn Doolittle comments how "we didn't do anything to change underlying attitudes."
The victim of domestic violence has a similar experience. Skye explained to me how, in order for a woman to be a credible victim of domestic abuse and receive not only safety and support but perhaps some retribution for the violence inflicted upon her, she must first get her abuser to leave and then to leave right away with children. In order to do that, she has to have somewhere to go. But what if she doesn’t? She has to be able to plan in advance. But what if, for some reason, she can’t? Cannot the violence she is undergoing be addressed and believed while she is still in the home?
Skye:
What does the system expect victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse to be like in order to be authentic? It's brutal to have to even think in a sequential way. I had the wherewithal to think that way only because I had seen this coming. And I had discussed it with my girlfriend beforehand, who I went to live with. She had a friend who was a police officer, and basically she shared with me what the protocol should be, what you need to do when this happens, because we knew it was going to happen one day. But what about all the people who don't see it happening? Who don’t happen to have a police officer friend to guide them? They don't know that you have to get the dad out of the house and then get out of the house yourself and, if you have kids, with them. And then, where are you supposed to go? If you don't have a plan, which I was lucky enough to have, where is she going to go? I had arranged to go to a friend’s. I couldn't go to my mom's. She would have said, “what are you doing? Just go back.” She wouldn't have believed me. Women who grew up in a patriarchal kind of household think, oh, you can't be alone. You're a woman. You need a man, you need to forgive that man and you need to go back. It wasn't until my mom saw all the pictures of my son's neck that she started to be on my side.
“Why doesn’t she just leave?”
is a typical response when a woman is living in the throes of domestic violence. Of course, when dealing with the psychological, emotional and economic aspects of power abuse, there is no ‘just’ about it and, often, no justice either. When one Googles “why don’t victims of domestic violence not leave,” there are lists of all of the reasons victims of domestic violence contend with in order to convince themselves to leave or to lie to themselves it’s better to stay.[5]
Skye experienced the psychological and emotional turmoil that all victims of domestic violence go through, not only when they are planning to leave, but also when they struggle with the decision that it’s best to go back—and then hate themselves for it which adds to the low self-esteem and vulnerability that abusers feed upon. When she finally had the courage to leave, Skye told me how not only her courage, but also the violence she was working to extricate herself and her young children from, were trivialized by the authorities.
Skye:
The officer said to me: this is the first time we've heard of this kind of abuse from your family. And then he said: “this is what I'm going to do: I'm going to call your husband and talk to him. And if I hear that he's remorseful then I don't have to charge him unless you tell me to charge him.” He left it on me to decide whether or not my husband should be charged. In my traumatized state and my inability to know exactly what to do and pressuring me to do something I was incapable of in that moment was an indirect act of victim blaming. My trauma and fear were undermined, and it was assumed I could just handle everything myself; inadvertently blaming me for the reality I was living.
All these things were running through my head: it's very difficult to leave because, for me, growing up in an Asian family, we had very coded expectations of how society saw us and what would happen if your husband's going to be charged. They're not going to be bondable. Most likely, they won't be able to work. My son has special needs. He requires a lot of therapy. I wouldn't be able to afford that on my own. But besides all the practical reasons, it was the family expectations. I thought at the time: I can't. I can't do it. What am I going to do on my own? How am I going to take care of my kids who are still quite young? These were all things that I was thinking of as well as my reputation with respect to my family. But in retrospect, I realize what I had done because I didn't charge him. He has never known that he has done something wrong. And even to this day, he doesn't acknowledge that he's done anything wrong. After all the abuse.
The only reason why I didn't jump was because he grabbed me.
Skye Cheung Roque Carino watercolour and ink on cotton paper 14X 20 inches 2022
Rape in Marriage:
Naturally, when dealing with a man entrenched in the psychopathology of power abuse in patriarchy, he also abused his wife. However, this was not an abuse like with her son where bruises could be seen; rather, Skye was bruised from the inside by sexual assaults that are rarely, if ever, justified. If sexual assault in general is difficult to prosecute, rape in marriage is virtually impossible. Such male impunity goes back to Biblical times and is the gender-based foundation upon which Western patriarchy continues to reside. In her book Against Our Will: Men Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller cites a Biblical forefather who decreed: “any carnal knowledge within the marriage contract was, by definition, lawful.” She traces this male-supremacist legislation into 17th Century Britain where Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale stated that “[a] husband cannot be guilty of rape upon his wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind to her husband, which she cannot retract.”[6]
In her article “The Long Fight to Criminalize Rape in Marriage,” Julie Bindel traces the lineage of husband ownership over his wife into the 1990s when “[f]inally, in October 1991, the courts of England and Wales recognised marital rape as a crime in the landmark case of R v R. In his judgement, Lord Lane confirmed: “The idea that a wife consents in advance to her husband having sexual intercourse with her whatever her state of health or however proper her objections, is no longer acceptable.”[7] However, predictably, patriarchal backlash ensued and Bindel reports how “[t]he ruling was a victory for feminists, but 30 years on, family courts, which administer civil as opposed to criminal remedies and deal with issues such as marriage, divorce and childcare, contact and residency, are still not using the criminal definition of rape when it applies to married couples.”[8]
Like the mandate of ‘implied consent’ for rape victims that is technically no longer permitted in rape trials but the attitude still permeates police interrogations, rape in marriage is no longer legal in countries like Britain and Canada[9] (when it can be proven, that is), but the law is overshadowed by what, in reality, is far from a legacy.
*
SC: His culture is really into alcohol and whenever we were at home after work, I'd often have a glass of wine. He would keep filling it up. There were many times where I ended up on the couch by myself in the middle of the night, waking up or even in the morning realizing and wondering if we’d had sex because I couldn't remember exactly. I was blacked out. But I felt it was true.[10] Now I realize that wasn't right. That's a form of abuse. That I shouldn't have tolerated that, but I was suppressing.
KM: Why were you on the couch?
SC: Because I had passed out and I couldn't make it up to the room.
KM: Oh, and even though he’d had sex with you, he didn't even carry you up to the bed. Just left you there.
SC: He left me there. Yeah.
KM: It's basically years of date rape.
SC: Years of non-consensual sex. I've talked to my therapist about this, and she says it would be almost impossible to bring that up and call it rape. Because you were married and there's no proof that it was not consensual.
Skye Cheung Adulthood encaustic on board 10X 8 inches 2021
Victim Blaming
In his book, Amateur: A True Story of What Makes a Man, transman Thomas Page McBee narrates his transition from female to male. During the process of moving from one gender to another in patriarchy, McBee became acutely aware of the male role models in his life, namely a father who had sexually abused him (when he was a female) as a child. During the writing and the transition, McBee realized: “I didn’t want to be a real man …. I was fighting for something better.” [11] He didn’t want to be a ‘real’ man who doesn’t have the courage to look at the injustice within himself to join this fight for something better.
Even though the majority of abusers in patriarchy (especially physical and sexual abuse) are men, women too can be responsible for the upholding of power abuse. Just because you are a woman, doesn’t mean that you are a feminist, or even a good person. Far from it. And it certainly doesn’t mean you aren’t complicit in maintaining a culture of gender inequality and exploitation. In Mexico, for example, it is common that the mothers are responsible for raising their boys as machos, machismo being defined as a strong sense of masculine pride, emotional insensitivity imbued in “the masculinist logic of defiance and struggle for power” [12] producing potential perpetrators when their power and superiority are threatened.
In all male supremacist cultures, it is also common that male children can do no wrong in the mother’s eyes, which is what happened with Skye’s ex-mother-in-law. Regardless of the photo of bruises around her grandson’s neck, her son could do no wrong and is—and should be—forgivable if violence inflicted is but a benign slip-up.
Male supremacy, be it generated and reinforced by men or women, mothers or fathers, results in victim blaming, where it is the woman’s fault that she was abused and the perpetrator has nothing to do with what he did. Male impunity can be upheld by both sexes and their corresponding genders.
Skye explained to me how her ex-husband’s abusive behaviour was excused, denied by both her mother and her mother-in-law. When Skye left the first time, both reacted with: “please forgive him” and thereby denied what the wife, mother and their grandchildren had been going through. Raised in a traditional Chinese family where the mother served all of her husband’s needs and was entirely dependent on him, the mother told the daughter: “you can't be alone. You're a woman. You need a man, you need to forgive that man and you need to go back.”
Skye’s mother-in-law actually acknowledged the source of her son’s violence when she stated that her disabled grandson “would not be able to carry on the family name.” A biological emmasculinization, the father’s potency, his reproductive power, had been cut off.
Even though Skye has sound recordings of shouting and verbal abuse (she would leave her phone on record when she went to work), video testimonies from her children, and photographs of the bruising, this denial of male violence escalated to:
Skye:
My family and his family told me his anger was my problem. I would get questioned about my absence from home even with respect to being at work. For instance, on the afternoon my son was strangled by my Ex, I was at work. After my mother saw my photos of my son’s bruised neck, her first question was “where were you when this happened?” Not one person in our family told my Ex what he did was wrong and that he should take responsibility for his actions.
Even with the evidence, I have been told that his anger was my problem and my fault.
Because we have all invariably been raised by and conditioned by a culture that is based in power abuse, both sexes and genders, all of us, need to have the courage to look at the injustice inside of ourselves to join the fight for something better. Patriarchal poisoning doesn’t only infect the perpetrator; it also creates the perpetrator’s necessary victim and those who inadvertently uphold the system by excusing abusers.
Skye Cheung Isolation VIII watercolour and ink on cotton paper 10x14 inches 2022
Internalized blame:
When society blames us for something that was not our fault, it is common to internalize that blame, to doubt what we lived through and what we know is true, feel that if we had done something differently it wouldn’t have happened and that we brought it on ourselves and, eventually, to even fall so deep into internalized blame that we hate ourselves. For Skye, however, as she started to extricate herself from the abusive relationship once and for all, she began her process of changing her identity or, in reality, embracing the truth of herself and the life she wants to live. Paradoxically, the instigator of her liberation was founded in profound internalized blame.
Skye:
I hated myself so much that I literally changed my name. I changed it to Skye because this is who I want to be. So much so that I'm going to change my name.
I want everyone to start calling me this now. And so I've managed to do that and it's helped me. Every time someone calls me Skye, it's helped me to speak up for myself. That's been the huge piece in this whole process. I'm not going to tolerate tiptoeing around things and living like I'm on eggshells anymore. I won’t. I can't do that. It's not authentic to myself. I'm trying to design my life so that it's the way I want to live it.
Male Impunity in Patriarchy.
KM: In a perfect world, what would you like to happen to him?
SC: Just some kind of outside source, whether it be a judge or whatever, saying:
You did do something wrong. You are an abuser. You shouldn't have done that to your son. Basically saying that this actually happened.
*
However, this is most likely not going to happen. It’s been five years. As Skye still fights in court, her ex-husband hides his money and makes her ability to get the support needed for her disabled son not only incredibly difficult, but also, keeps her trapped in the cycle of trauma.
Skye:
To date, we have not agreed on a property nor child custody settlement. As there is no statute of limitations on domestic abuse, I can charge him but I question if this option would bring any justice or closure to my family. Charging my Ex would put him at risk of losing his job which would cancel any financial support I might receive. My kids would definitely not be happy with me. I haven't made any decisions on whether to proceed with the court case. So I am not dropping it. However, I reflect on several major issues:
If my priority is to help my son to heal from trauma then would charging my Ex be the best option? Does charging him negate my radical acceptance of his behavior, ‘radical acceptance’ being when, instead or trying to change someone’s behaviour, we detach ourselves from the pain they have caused us and accept that. Personally, I know that I cannot control my Ex’s management of his anger.
If I charge my Ex, will it change my ability to radically accept that he strangled my son and, ultimately, our ability to heal and move in? Is this selfish? If I don’t charge my Ex, am I being authentic to my feminist self? What do my children need me to do?
But what I do know for certain is that I hope the telling of my story will invite others to share their stories of abuse and help them heal. Personally, this experience is the inspiration for my art and the reason I stand for feminist rights.
*
By having the courage to tell her story and share her experiences of domestic abuse and violence in patriarchy, Skye is turning a negative into a positive. Regardless of formal acknowledgement in a still patriarchal culture of male impunity, our stories chip away at its imposed reality. All victims of violence can keep telling our stories. Like the relentless love as Skye painted the sky and the water. Share our proof that this happened. This is true. This is what is denied in patriarchy. And this is what we need to acknowledge and change.
Skye Cheung Roque Belleza watercolour and ink on cotton paper 14X 20 inches 2022
Rock:
In the beginning, there was rock. And the beginning is where we need to come back to in order to begin again.
Skye discovered the healing foundation of rock during a residency on the Canary Islands AIR Guiniguada,[13] that focuses on sustainable art practices. In her artist statement, Skye explains how being immersed in the cultures abroad developed her role as an advocate for peace in response to domestic and ecological violence. Skye explains how: “the rock paintings represent short love stories in the spirit of eco-sexuality. They depict abstract rock forms that aim to humanize the landscape and call viewers to join the eco-sex movement.”[14]
Despite the immanent solidity of rock, the rocks of Skye’s paintings are free-floating, unmoored. Painted with watercolour and ink on cotton paper, the forms bleed into the paper and there is a translucence where the inherent density of rock is more like paper dancing an unfinished journey. However, at the same time, each rock is connected as mini-strings of DNA, each image a triptych, groups of three as the number of balance, harmony, wisdom and understanding. These paintings give us the possibility of always new beginnings—and wide-open hope. And, as rock, the solidity we can return to.
Skye Cheung Roque Deambular watercolour and ink on cotton paper 14X 20 inches 2022
From the infinite embrace of the sky while imprisoned in domestic abuse, to the water that called her salvation, to rock that form a foundation of lived awareness and transformation, Skye has extended her personal suffering into the natural world that has healed her. It's like the nature and the art are intertwined and they help, Skye told me. Being victimized by, surviving and triumphing over the violence inherent to patriarchy, Skye developed her feminist sensibility; she now sees nature as ‘anti-patriarchal’ and anti-individualist. Everything is connected. Anti-hierarchical. Interdependent. A community of All.
And now, like so many other victim/survivors and like so many who can, Skye has dedicated her life to sharing the wisdom and the strength that she gained through pain. To healing beyond herself. Skye’s personal suffering and survival of patriarchal violence healed through art.
Skye:
the importance of the conservation of our earth is integral to my artistic practice. Without the beauty of the untouched landscape, free from the poisoning of the environmental patriarchy, it would be impossible to instill an appreciation for the power that the landscape can give to heal suffering. I explore the connection between human appreciation for the ability of the world’s beauty to heal and our motivation to preserve our land.
From the micro of domestic violence to the macro of creating art that is, as the artist explains, “free from the poisoning of environmental patriarchy,” Skye is motivated to “cultivate beauty through landscape painting to inspire others to retreat, heal and become empowered.”
You can heal through nature and you can give back to it at the same time.
We go back to what we are of, to who we truly are, in order to move forward.
*
Update:
Karen Moe interviewed me and wrote this essay in February 2023. Out of fear, I didn’t allow her to publish it on the advice of my lawyer. I have since changed lawyers.
This article begins with a statement about going back to before. When I began my journey into Feminism by reliving a traumatic event that I had suppressed for so many years, I thought that dismantling my ex-husband’s violent dysregulated anger would be the answer to my peace. Sometimes it is necessary to go back further. On Mother’s Day, I discovered that my mother and ex-husband were still in an active ongoing text exchange that had continued for the past 3 years. After my father discovered this and ‘gave it to her’, I saw the reason for my acceptance of the 21 years of abuse. It was my norm. I am more motivated than ever to end this intergenerational trauma for my children. I hope they will live lives free of abuse and create safe spaces for themselves.
Creating barriers is the key to surviving divorce from a narcissist. My ex-husband continues to use calculated, coercive control and fly under the radar utilizing means that may not be physical, extending litigation as long as possible. He has created an imbalance of power.
I continue to paint as an act of spiritual practice and healing. I share my work to be seen and heard. I aim to help others on their journey of healing from domestic abuse.
Some invaluable resources that have helped me with my legal battle are: Zay Kamel, a divorce consultant, that I found in a resource link from Tina Swithin’s site One Mom’s Battle Divorcing a Narcissist. After several calls to the Barbara Schlifer Clinic asking for help, I was finally granted 2 hours with a trauma informed mediator/arbitrator, and I spoke to a lawyer at Holland Bloorview rehabilitation hospital who provides pro bono legal aid to families of patients.
Skye Cheung August 2024
References:
Skye Cheung Ai ai ai 14x10 inches watercolour 2024
About the Artist:
Skye Cheung is a Canadian-Asian artist, an Ecofeminist, a poet. The aim of her work is for meditative purposes and offers a safe haven from patriarchal violence. It is her hope that these sublime images of nature will evoke empowering Neofeminist strength to overcome adversity from our patriarchal society. Skye's personal struggle with domestic violence shapes her artistic purpose, aesthetic and creative process. Skye's background in art history and education feeds her curiosity in simultaneously referencing and questioning patriarchal norms.
About the Writer:
Karen Moe is an author, art critic, visual and performance artist, and feminist activist. Her work focuses on systemic violence in patriarchy: be it gender, race, class, the environment or speciesism. Her art criticism has been published internationally in magazines, anthologies and artist catalogues in English and Spanish, she has exhibited and performed across Canada, the US and Mexico and has spoken on sexual violence internationally. She is the author of Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor Vigilance Press (2022) which received Runner Up at the San Francisco Book Festival and blogs as The Logical Feminist. During her North American Tour, she was presented with the “Ellie Liston Hero of the Year Award” by the DA of Ventura County for being instrumental in the life sentence given to a serial rapist. Karen speaks internationally on sexual violence, sharing her lived experiences of "trauma & triumph." Victim has recently been translated into Spanish. Karen lives in Mexico City and Vancouver Island, Canada.
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Notes:
[1] Valencia 23; 55.
[3] See the July 24th 2020 publication “Not the Only Killer” for details and statistics. https://www.vigilancemagazine.com/post/nottheonlykiller
[4]Robyn Doolittle had it Coming: What’s Fair in the Age of #MeToo? Allen Lane: Penguin Random House, 2019: 133.
[6] Susan Brownmiller Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Random House, 1975.380
[7] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/6/15/the-long-road-to-criminalising-rape-within-marriage
[8] Ibid.
[9] Julie Bindel tells us that “despite the hard-won progress in the UK, rape in marriage remains legal in many countries, including Uruguay, Panama, Chile, Honduras, Ecuador and El Salvador. In these countries, rape in marriage is not a criminal offence unless the victim can prove that she suffered additional violence. In Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala and Nicaragua rape in marriage is perfectly legal; https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/6/15/the-long-road-to-criminalising-rape-within-marriage
[10] See Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor. In anti-feminist, male rights activist Mike Cernovich “goes so far as to result in denial of date rape and the sociological complexities that lead to a young woman wondering if her body and emotions have been exploited, whether the sex she didn’t want to have is also a form of violence.”(60) We doubt ourselves. We doubt our bodies. If your body tells you you were raped or a man had sex with you without your consent, you most likely were. If not, why would that thought, that wondering, come into our bodies in the first place?
[11] McBee, Thomas Page. Amateur: A True Story about What Makes a Man. New York: Scribner, 2018: 44.
[12] Ibid: 55.
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