VCU news

By Carissa Etters

The Virginia Commonwealth University Injury & Violence Prevention Program’s Project EMPOWER presents the “Love Shouldn’t Hurt” open house. The annual event promotes awareness of intimate partner and domestic violence and also provides resources to health care providers, visitors and patients.

This year’s “Love Shouldn’t Hurt” event will be on Thursday, Feb. 12, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Learning Center in VCU Medical Center Main Hospital, 1250 E. Marshall St. The event will include a silent auction, community and hospital resource tables and a domestic violence homicide survivor speaker. The event is free and open to the public.

An exhibit featuring the work of nationally recognized artist and teacher Lucy Gans will be on display in conjunction with the “Love Shouldn’t Hurt” event. Gans is an artist, and teacher of sculpture and drawing at Lehigh University. She combines portraits with stamped, cut, carved or written text, using her face and body as a stand-in for all women. In the text she uses statistics on violence and injustices committed against women and girls, including domestic violence, to frame her pieces both physically and metaphorically, and as a way to negotiate through some of the irreconcilable differences she encounters in human behavior. The exhibit will remain on display at the hospital from Feb. 1 to 21.