I Beg Their Pardon!
On International Women’s Day 2022, Nicola Sturgeon offered a posthumous apology to those prosecuted, tried and executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563, calling the trials a ‘historic injustice’. The apology was the result of a campaign by The Witches of Scotland Group, which, in addition to the apology, called for an official pardon and a national monument for all those persecuted during the trials.
This piece is an imagined monument, inspired by forms from woodcut images of the witch trials and filled with text from various sources describing the importance of this topic and its contemporary relevance. As Sturgeon put it, “They were not witches, they were people, and they were overwhelmingly women.”
