NEW YORK.-What do the Golden Globe nominated films Defiance, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire have in common with the mixed-media art installation Dry Tears? Like the newspaper headlines that denounce human rights violations in Guantanamo, Iraq and Africa, they are forcing us to examine man’s inhumanity to man.

Dry Tears, in the Grand Gallery of the National Arts Club, by multi awarding-winning abstract artist Rosalyn Engelman calls attention to the ongoing tragedy of human trafficking and human rights violations. Ed McCormack wrote in Gallery & Studio One of the most paradoxical aspects of Engelman’s paintings is that the aesthetic pleasure they provide almost implicate us in the horrors they describe.

By using an arsenal of explicit, graphic and brutal imagery to capture the viewer’ s attention, she translates horrific behavior into a compelling art installation. As Laura Kruger, Curator of Hebrew Union College Museum wrote to create such an epic work, “requires maturity, compassion and a lifetime commitment to creating fine art.”

Rosalyn Engelman explains, “My life and sensibility have been greatly influenced by Jewish concerns. As a child, the atrocities of World War II were deeply ingrained upon my psyche and inner vision. Graphic newsreel and worries about family were part of my earliest consciousness. My father emigrated from Warsaw, Poland and lost many family members, as did my mother who left Russia after Russian Revolution.. The exhibition Dry Tears comes from Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar,” which memorizes the Nazi massacre of 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29th and 30th, 1941. The exhibition will be on view until February 13th.