Category: Sabbatical

Content note: This piece includes discussion of sexual assault, sexual violence, consent, substance use, and BDSM imagery.

I titled this piece Nothing Bad Happened before I knew if I was ready to explain it.

That’s often how my work functions. I process parts of my life through art before I fully understand what I’m touching. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. This was an image I took down from the wall, looked at briefly, and put back. Not because it wasn’t good, but because I wasn’t ready to sit with it.

Then someone I care about asked me about the title. Someone I want to know better. I don’t let people get close easily, so the question caught me off guard. Instead of deflecting, I chose to answer.

This year, my themes have been connection, authenticity, community, and intentionality. Not the loud kind. Not the polished kind. The quiet kind that shows up sitting on a couch in a gallery, talking honestly about a piece of art.

So I told the truth.

Twelve years ago, I invited someone into my home under a sexual pretense. There were drugs. There was bondage. And there were substances involved that I did not consent to. I woke up hours later still tied up, alone, my home emptied. My credit cards, my car, my electronics gone. What happened changed the trajectory of my life.

I was sexually assaulted.

Our culture is obsessed with narrow definitions. I’m done shrinking my experience to fit them.

I did nothing wrong. What happened was not my fault. I did not get what I deserved.

I’ve done years of therapy since then. Different modalities. Different clinicians. Harm reduction because it works for me right now. Trauma doesn’t disappear just because time passes. It lives in the body. In desire. In fear. In the places you still avoid.

For me, that includes a complicated relationship with bondage. I’m drawn to it and wary of it at the same time. I want to experience it as something consensual, skillful, and safe. I can’t say I’ve fully reclaimed that yet.

This photograph was part of that work.

What you’re seeing is not my body. It’s someone else’s. What mattered to me was the care in the moment. The attention. The trust. The skill. I witnessed restraint practiced with intention and compassion, and I was able to capture it. I was present. I was grounded. Nothing bad happened.

When the idea for this exhibition came together, the title arrived instantly. Not as denial. As truth.

I lived through witnessing restraint. I lived through photographing it. And this time, there was no harm. That matters more than it might seem.

Maybe someday I’ll trust someone enough to go there myself. Maybe not. For now, I have my art. I have the stories behind it. And I have the act of creation, which has always been where I reclaim my power.

Art doesn’t erase trauma. But it interrupts it. It creates light where there used to be silence.

Nothing bad happened.

And that, for me, is a kind of healing.

Keep telling the story,

Sawubona,

Professor Peacock