Victim Had Been Drinking
COLLAGE FROM EVIDENCE, JADE BLUE
Victim Had Been Drinking (2022) - Jade Blue
When I first received my police information bundle in response to my subject access request, I was overwhelmed. It wasn’t just a folder of paperwork - it was my trauma laid out in codes, diagrams, and official jargon. Every part of my body, every detail of what I had endured, had been turned into evidence. Reading through it felt dehumanising. I was no longer a person, just a case file.
One day, I started cutting it up. At first, it was destructive - tearing into something that had carried so much weight. But soon the destruction became creation. I began to arrange the fragments: police logos, anatomical sketches, handwritten notes, stamped words like “PROBABLE RAPE” and “Victim had been drinking.” Placed together, they revealed the contradictions, the biases, and the coldness of how the system records sexual violence.
The act of collage gave me back a sense of control. Instead of being defined by the file, I could redefine it. Instead of being flattened by its weight, I could reshape it into something that spoke more honestly. By rearranging the words and images, I made them speak to each other - exposing the absurdity of how a violation can be labelled “probable,” or how a victim is diminished by a note about alcohol.
The contrast between the sterile paperwork and the vulnerable body diagrams is stark. On their own, these documents present trauma as measurements, swabs, and millimetres of bruising. They strip away humanity. But when reassembled through collage, their brutality becomes visible. It shows how the system doesn’t just record violence - it can also replicate it, in the way it questions, judges, and reduces survivors to evidence.
Making this collage was cathartic. It turned something that had once suffocated me into something expressive. Cutting and pasting became a reversal of the process I had endured: rather than being fragmented by trauma and bureaucracy, I was the one doing the fragmenting, shaping meaning on my own terms.
What began as paperwork is now testimony. The bundle was intended to serve as evidence of a crime. But this artwork is evidence of something else - of how it feels to live through both the violence and the system’s cold response to it. In reclaiming these documents, I reclaim a piece of myself.
