By Eli Bartra and Liliana Elvira Moctezuma.
PRESENTATION
In this very dire time that we are living in, we talk about THE pandemic all the time. But it is necessary to think that there is more than one: in Mexico the pandemic of femicide grows every day. Of course, calling it a pandemic is somewhat metaphorical because the concept itself means that it attacks the entire population, on a global level, and not as in this case, that it only affects women.
A similar phenomenon occurs when we talk about the Holocaust. There have been many genocides and holocausts, by the dozens throughout history and around the world: there is not only the one against the Jews by the Nazis. There were the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, which left some 11 million dead; the Muslim conquests in India in the 15th century caused 400 million deaths and it has been called the largest genocide in existence; that is, India suffered genocides and holocausts by the Arabs, Turks, Mongols, among others, for 800 years. At the end of the 19th century, in the Congo, Belgian colonialism exterminated 10 million people. At the beginning of the 20th century we have the holocaust of the Armenian people by Turkey in which some 2 million people died. And we must not forget the Stalinist Soviet Holocaust (1924-1953) against the Ukrainian people, and its purges and atrocities, which claimed some 5 million lives.
Femicide is not a new phenomenon. What is relatively new is the concept and the proportions. Nor is the phenomenon of women being raped, perhaps as old as humanity itself.
Although violence against women has existed for a long time in Mexico, it has been practically invisible and even naturalized. In addition, women have had access to education and artistic creation for approximately 100 years, so men would hardly have made it visible, unless it was to capture specific events, as José Guadalupe Posada did. It began to be expressed after the Mexican Revolution with a clear influence from the engraver, as in the cases of Isabel Villase r and Frida Kahlo.
As you can see in the examples we have selected from contemporary artistic practices, the image of violence against women has been present from that time onwards, in some expressions more and in others less.
Without the intention of comparing, we will show works by both men and women, which we have considered significant for their aesthetic power, in order to shed light on their genetic differences.
One of the main representations of violence against women in art is, without a doubt, femicide. This is surely because it is brutal, because it is extreme? Beatings often have a solution, death does not, and neither does femicide. Art that depicts or denounces the problem of violence against women is intended to provoke discomfort and, sometimes, empathy. Discomfort when scenes of violence or elements that remind us of abused or even murdered women are explicitly shown. Empathy, when it reminds us of some that are no longer there due to situations of violence.
Since popular art tends to be made for a very specific market, if it depicts situations of violence it may be more difficult to market it. Popular art often tends to present repetitive themes where this type of violent events and their denunciation have little place. However, it is likely that if popular artists had more creative freedom, it could then be a recurring theme given that, unfortunately, the fact of being a woman in Mexico almost necessarily implies having suffered some kind of violence.