Emma
Sulkowicz is a senior visual arts student at Columbia University. On
the first day of her sophomore year, she says, she was raped by a
classmate on her mattress.
"Rape can happen anywhere," she explains
in the video above. "For me, I was raped in my own dorm bed. Since then,
it has basically become fraught for me, and I feel like I've carried
the weight of what happened there with me everywhere since then."
Sulkowicz'
senior thesis, titled "Mattress Performance" or "Carry That Weight," is
a literal expression of that emotional weight. In what she calls an
endurance art piece, she will drag her mattress everywhere she goes on
campus until her rapist is expelled or leaves. The project, she says,
could extend for one day or for the entire remainder of her time at
Columbia.