Pete Driessen

Pete Driessen, a Minneapolis-based artist, responded to the Rwandan genocide in his series, Valentina's Nightmare. According to his artist statement, Driessen's work "blends allegorical history painting, color theory, and critical theory into a polemic narrative."

Driessen was inspired by the documentary Valentina's Nightmare:  A Journey into the Rwanda Genocide, which aired on PBS in 1996.  The documentary is about a young Rwandan Tutsi survivor who had her hands cut off and lay hidden under a pile of bodies for several days, and survived to tell her story.  Valentina was later interviewed again in two subsequent documentaries, The Triumph of Evil  (1999), and Ghosts of Rwanda (2004).

Contact Information: Pete Driessen

Click on image to enlarge

Artwork posted with permission of Pete Driessen.