Mary Lee Talbot
Staff writer
“This is the most a piece of mine has ever been ‘used.’ Because people walk on it, it has to be re-taped over and over,” said Rosemary Feit Covey. “It was made to be walked on, to make people uncomfortable.”
Her art installation “Red Handed — Sudan: Don’t Turn Away” is on display in Randell Chapel United Church of Christ Headquarters. The immersive art installation is a 40 feet by 35 feet mixed-media floor artwork, with imagery of stylized bodies with hands dipped in red paint. The installation is designed to adapt to its space; the one on display in Randell Chapel focuses specifically on the two-year civil war in Sudan that has left tens of thousands dead and millions displaced.
It will be in Chautauqua through Week Eight.
It is an exploration of collective versus personal guilt; as one reviewer wrote, “It feels as if Covey has placed us in an impossible situation: either refuse to engage, which feels like complacency, or tread on the work, which feels like violence: we are caught red-handed.”
“The piece is about bearing witness, about the guilt we feel even when we have done nothing wrong,” Covey said. “We have to take responsibility for ignoring this situation, and this piece brings that to the press and to those who should be interested.”
She continued, “What I want for my art is to cause discussion, for people to be annoyed. It is meant to be walked on, and I took it to the Cultural Summit 2017 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. It was culturally upsetting, and so they put stanchions around it, so people could not walk on it. Walking on it breaks down the barrier between the viewer and the art.”
Covey grew up in South Africa and moved to the United States when she was 10. Her grandmother, who was Austrian, had a great influence on her art and on her becoming an artist. Now an internationally renowned artist, her work is held in more than 40 major collections, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Covey has been a professional artist, a printmaker, since her 20s. She had been doing work where the context could define the story, adapted to its use.
The Rev. Richard Jones, who serves on the board of the American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans (AFRECS) commissioned her to produce a piece to bring awareness of the situation in Sudan in 2013. “This work was different in that it was to be used in a church. The project would be used in the church. The full piece is three times as large as the portion on display here,” Covey said.
In May 2025, AFRECS organized an exhibition of “Red Handed” as part of its 20th anniversary celebration of its founding. The Rev. James Hubbard, long-time Chautauquan, a member of the Motet and Chautauqua Choirs and a board member of AFRECS, took Ruth Becker, another long-time Chautauquan and a member of the Motet and Chautauqua Choirs, to see the exhibit. She immediately began to work with contacts in the UCC Headquarters to display the installation at Chautauqua.
During that exhibition in Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, a young man, who was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan and is now a petroleum engineer, brought his two sons. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, more than 20,000 young displaced and orphan boys fled Sudan on foot, looking for a better life. He talked about the war and said the child soldiers still being recruited there are the same age as his sons — 10 to 12.
According to a letter to The Washington Post from AFRECS executive director Dane F. Smith, “In 2024, the United States Government said that the situation in Sudan was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world — exceeding Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, Myanmar and other crises.”
“We can’t just turn away. This is a humanitarian crisis, not a political one,” Covey said. “People who have seen the installation have started noticing articles in the press and that has brought it to consciousness for them.”
