Did You See This?

Rotatio

A short documentary about an artist who processed her rape through a work she then destroyed.

Artist Shannon May Mackenzie drew thousands of tick marks on a wall. Interspersed within those tick marks were sentences. They told the story of her rape.

Mackenzie embarked on the piece, “Rotatio,” as a way to heal. “Purging is the best way to describe this piece,” she explained. “Little fragments of myself that I don’t want to carry any more.” The work was a six-foot circle: When the camera in the video shows us the final product, we see that one-half of the circle is neat, while the other is disintegrating. As part of the process, Mackenzie painted over the piece after she was done.

The only record of her work is the short documentary by Ian McClerin above.