Sadly you don’t need long researches to prove that femicides are a global emergency. Switch on the news wherever you are and you will hear stories of women murdered, often by men very close to them (intimate partner femicide is among the most common ones).
In some countries such as El Savador, Honduras, Brazil and Mexico rates are so high that commentators consider femicides as an epidemic. Between January and November 2018 Mexico was for example among the Latin American states that registered the highest number of femicides (94).
In Ciudad Juárez, along the US /Mexico Border, many of the women killed were students or young mothers who migrated to this region seeking employment in "maquiladoras". Separated from their families and usually travelling alone when they go back home, these women are easy targets.
The reasons behind femicides are different, but there are scholars and historians who highlight that male egos (envious about these young women working and having more economic influence) play a big part. In Latin America macho culture has been a key factor to the rapid escalation of femicides.
Quite a few countries have launched initiatives against femicides, but feminist groups often highlight that enforcing laws against murder of women is not among the priorities of governments because of patriarchal beliefs and assumptions about the role of women in society (many governments hide data on violence against women and femicides). Yet if governments and the authorities are failing at tackling gender violence (authorities often show a lack of commitment to punish gender-based crimes...), art is giving a hand to fight against this epidemic.
Artist and feminist Teresa Margolles refocuses for example on the brutalities of narcoviolence and women in Mexico.
Born in 1963 in Culiacán, Mexico, Margolles studied forensic medicine; a co-founder of the death-metal inspired artist collective SEMEFO, she now lives and works in Mexico City.
Margolles has got two installations at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice: "Muro Ciudad Juárez" (2010) creates an obstruction in the main room on the ground floor of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini.
It consists in sections of a concrete wall with bullet holes topped with barbed wire from a public school in front of which a reckoning with 4 people involved in organised crime took place in Ciudad Juárez. The artist does not directly depict violence, but the latter is implicit in the aftermath of its occurrence.
In yesterday's post we looked at Barca Nostra discussing the horror of death at the Biennale, but the same theme could be discussed in connection with this piece by Margolles that also hints at social barriers and injustices (think about Donald Trump's xenophobic wall that should separate the US from Mexico).
Margolles' "La Busqueda" (The Search), the installation in the Arsenale, is also very moving: here visitors are invited to stop for a while in front of glass panels framed in metal taken from the city centre of Ciudad Juárez.
Glued on the panels there are photocopies of posters showing photographs of missing women. The panels rattle and vibrate every now and then with the noise of the train cutting across Ciudad Juárez that Margolles recorded. In a way the panels could be interpreted almost as tombstones rattled by the ghosts of these women, whose lives were abruptly, tragically and prematurely interrupted.
The artist uses the recorded noise of the train to reawaken us to the rampant misogynist violence spreading all over the world, reminding us that, if we don't plan new strategies for radical changes and transformation, the memories of these women will be lost forever, like a faded photocopy on a glass panel.
Margolles received a special mention during the awarding ceremony at the Venice Biennale, with the following motivation "for her sharp and poignant works that deal with the plight of women grossly affected by the narcotics trade in her native Mexico, and for creating powerful testimonies by shifting existing structures from the real world into the Exhibition halls."
Comments