The Missing Missing
September 2021 – January 2022
Studio 531 Architects
546 Herald St, Victoria BC
24/7 viewing (window display)
We are pleased to announce that Jessica Dearman will be showing work at our satellite gallery at Studio 531 Architects for the next quarter.
About the work: “The missing missing” is a term used to describe people who are not known or reported to be missing. Usually these are the marginalized members of the North American population including prostitutes, illegal immigrants, runaway children and the homeless. According to the 2007 research article “The Missing Missing: Toward a Quantification of Serial Murder Victimization in the United States” by Kenna Quinet, professor of criminology at Indiana University-Purdue University, the missing missing are possible victims of serial killers adding anywhere from 182 to 1832 uncounted serial murders per year in the United States. This work is a reproduction of a map released in 2004 by the FBI illustrating a database of approximately 500 bodies found dumped along interstate highways as part of their “Highway Serial Killings Initiative.” The victims are mostly women, engaged in sex trafficking, vagrancy and drug abuse who are picked up at truck stops, murdered and discarded along the interstate highways. Their violent crimes go unsolved and the criminals, often long haul truck drivers known as long haul serial killers, go free. The work realizes these statistics as a tangible entity, moving the audience beyond the faceless numbers and connecting them with the human reality that they represent.
About the artist: Jess Dearman is an emerging visual artist residing in the oldest Chinatown in Canada and is currently pursuing a Visual Arts Diploma at Camosun College. At present, she is engaged in making art that invites the viewer to touch, look and move between. Her art is a medium for exploration and draws upon the energy of the City she loves: the concrete, the rot, the sprawl and the human experience within.