Artists combine their skills to denounce gender violence

The Government of the Canary Islands, in collaboration with the Cabildo de Lanzarote, inaugurates the exhibition "Because she was mine! For the non-violence of women" on Friday, June 26, at the El Almacén Island Center, in Arrecife. The exhibition, organized by the Vice-Ministry of Culture, opens to the public at 8:30 p.m. and can be visited until July 31 at this center, from where it will later be moved to Gran Canaria, Tenerife and La Palma, after having already been exhibited at the Casa de los Coroneles in Fuerteventura.

Heartbreaking screams, drama, lights, shadows, contrasting colors, resigned, mistreated, thoughtful, flogged, huddled in themselves and outraged women timidly walk through this exhibition that brings together 23 artists from various disciplines and more than a dozen Canarian and peninsular writers who use the word as a weapon against gender violence.

The Government of the Canary Islands, in collaboration with the councils of each island where it will be exhibited, has organized this collective that highlights the concern that the issue of gender violence has generated from the artistic and literary point of view.

Through artistic disciplines of the most varied -photographs, sculptures, video creations, graphic language, digitized drawings and painting- the artists recreate gender violence through an infinity of materials -bronze, iron, oil, wood, stones, acrylics, graffiti, parchments, paper, recycled materials??, which become art to fight against abuse in all its forms and extension.

The exhibition contains samples of a total of 23 works of small and large format in various media, engravings, sculptures, painting and video, in addition to an installation and a comic. The plastic work will be accompanied by a fifteen texts by writers and intellectuals from various areas of thought.

With a few exceptions, each artist has two works, mostly painting and sculpture, although there is also graphic work, drawings, photographs, an installation, a comic and a video installation.

Among the artists are José Abad, Ildefonso Aguilar, Carmen Arozena, Fernando Bellver, Gonzalo González, Marta Mariño, Vicky Penfold, Amelia Pisaca, Equipo Urma Thröll; the texts are signed by José Saramago, Fernando Aguilera, Juan Cruz, Cecilia Domínguez, Carmen Fraga, Javier Morales, Carmen Pitti or Mercedes Pinto, among others.

Thus, word and art come together in this exhibition, which is born with the desire to enrich the cultural offer in the islands, and at the same time, to spread in the Archipelago the creative work carried out by young artists and writers such as those who participate in this exhibition, which will not leave the viewer indifferent.