When Art Becomes Memorial: Wilma Wolf and the Weight of Making the Unmissable Visible
There are some works of art that you wish didn't need to exist. Wilma Woolf's Domestic is one of them.
The series consists of eight plates laid out like a dinner setting on a black glass table—so black it acts as a mirror, forcing you to encounter your own face as you read. Each plate records a single year in the UK, listing the women killed by men, their relationship to the perpetrator, and a ring of small icons describing how they died. It's as if Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party collided head-on with the grim reality of contemporary statistics in Britain. It's beautiful, meticulous, and devastating.
Watch our full interview with Wilma.
A Practice Born from Absence
Woolf's work began with a simple, terrible realization: the UK government doesn't officially count or record women killed by male violence in one comprehensive place. This data exists only because of activists like Karen Ingala Smith, who runs the website Counting Dead Women, spending over a decade scouring news reports and newspaper articles to compile names that would otherwise disappear.
"Those women should still be here," Woolf says simply. "And knowing that there is nowhere to collectively grieve or acknowledge their lives that they should have had—that's where it started."
What began as awareness of a list of names evolved through many iterations before Woolf landed on ceramics. The choice was deliberate, drawing on Britain's grand tradition of ceramic design—plates that have existed in this country for hundreds of years, often with decorative icons around the edges. But instead of pastoral scenes or commemorative events, these plates record something far more urgent.
The Art World and the Weight of Recognition
Woolf created Domestic as her degree show piece at Central St. Martins. When the show was cancelled due to COVID and eventually rescheduled, something remarkable happened: person after person told her to contact Richard Saltoun Gallery, which specializes in contemporary women's art. She did the thing artists are often advised not to do—she sent a direct email with a few images. Saltoun responded immediately.
The gallery didn't just give her wall space. They handed over their venue for an evening, allowing Woolf to organize a panel discussion about the work. It was packed to the rafters, standing room only.
"I think one of the things that it demonstrated is how much people want to see and talk about these difficult issues in the art world," Woolf reflects. "Pieces of work can act before us. They can take up the mantle of having that difficult conversation because the artwork introduces it. That burden is taken off the individual."
An Unusual Relationship with Success
Despite the work's impact—it's been shown at Parliament, the V&A, and Richard Saltoun Gallery—Woolf has what she calls "a very unusual relationship" with her work. She stands in front of it and feels devastated, not proud. Family members of victims have come to viewings, running their fingers down a particular year until they find a name.
The most haunting aspect? Woolf could make a plate every year going forward, knowing roughly how many spaces to leave on the grid. No government policy in the history of recording this data has had any measurable impact on the number of women losing their lives to male violence in the UK.
"This is a predictable, measurable crime," she says, "and that as a collective we have somehow accepted that it's part of this coexistence that we have."
From Documentation to Prevention: Temple of Safety
After Domestic took everything from her emotionally and creatively, Woolf needed distance. But one question kept surfacing: How did we get here? What can we do to interrupt this pattern before it reaches the deadly endpoint documented in those plates?
This led to her current project, Temple of Safety—a set of 16 articles based on four pillars, outlining rights people should have within intimate relationships. The pillars are: the right to exist without fear, control or intimidation; the right to agency within your own home; the right to freedom of speech and to be yourself within a relationship; and the right to fulfillment of your own life outside the relationship.
The statements are written in the positive, clarifying a gray area many people don't realize exists: "You have the right to experience life without being physically, mentally, or financially abused." "You have the right for your intentions and actions to be viewed without suspicion." "You have the right to leave your partner if you are unhappy without fear of what they may then do in retribution."
Woolf drew inspiration from the drafting of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, when philosophers were brought in to break a deadlock. Their solution? Identify crimes so great that everyone could agree on them, and shames so profound that no one would stand for them.
Black and White, With Layers
Temple of Safety will appear on billboards, in downloadable posters for schools and educational establishments, and as art objects. The aesthetic is stark—black backgrounds with white text—creating a visual statement that this is black and white, right and wrong. Yet within the text itself are layers of meaning, asterisks that expand on what abuse actually looks like in practice.
"Even if it clears up that gray area for one person, that's what I'm trying to achieve as an artist," Woolf says. "Can this work help clarify those areas so that you know these are rights you should have literally from the second you start a relationship?"
People who've seen the work have reflected not just on romantic relationships, but on relationships with parents, stepparents, and others. The statement about living free from demeaning language resonates across contexts where power imbalances exist.
The Burden and the Gift
Woolf sees her work as a small drop in an ocean of people working tirelessly to create change. Her goal is modest and profound: to be an old lady one day who can look back and say she created everything she could, putting as much into it as possible, regardless of retrospectives or recognition.
"Ninety-nine percent of artists live in a world where they don't actually know who they're creating the work for," she observes. "You have to create it from a sense of belief that you'd be creating it anyway even if no one saw it."
Yet the work does get seen. It makes headlines when it shows, creates conversations that wouldn't otherwise happen, and carves out permanent space for discussions we desperately need to have. In a culture that tends to address issues like domestic violence only when they make headlines before moving on to the next story, Woolf's work remains—bearing witness, memorializing loss, and now, with Temple of Safety, attempting to prevent future tragedies.
We are, as the title of this piece suggests, very lucky that Wilma Woolf is making the work she's making right now. Even if we wish, with every fiber of our being, that it didn't need to exist at all.
You can find Wilma Wolf's work at wilmaworks.com and follow her on Instagram at @wilmaworks.