February 27, 2006—An exhibition that focuses on the Missing Women in Juarez Mexico and an art-based event commemorating the lives of women disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown will be highlights of a series of programs organized in Vancouver as part of International Women’s Day/2006 celebrations.
Monument to Ciudad Juarez, Only Women Who Die A Violent Death Go Directly to a Paradise, opens at Vancouver’s Gallery Gachet, 88 East Cordova Street, on March 3, 2006. The opening ceremony and performance is from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. The exhibit continues until April 2, 2006.
Remembering our Sisters highlights some of the sixty-five commemorative quilts produced by women of the Downtown Eastside. Poetry and music will be featured at an event taking place at 119 West Pender Street, on March 8, 2006, International Women’s Day. A special guest, poet and Guatemalan woman’s activist Sandra Moran is scheduled to perform and bring greetings from the women of a country also devastated by hundreds of cases of missing and murdered women.
Monument to Ciudad Juarez, a video/installation/performance is the work of Colombian Canadian artist, Claudia Bernal. The exhibit travels to Vancouver from Bernal’s home in Montreal. (see attached details and background).
Remembering Our Sisters uses the celebratory occasion of International Women’s Day to both commemorate the more than sixty-five women who have disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and to celebrate the art and political activism of those who continue the struggle for equality and survival among some of Vancouver’s most marginalized women.
The organizations Wish Drop-In Centre, PEERS and PACE, groups that provide counselling services for current and exiting sex-trade workers, are hosting the celebration, art and performances with broad community support from women in BC’s Labour Movement and others. (see details attached).
Another associated activity planned for later in March is a lecture and workshop by well-known feminist, activist, educator and author Silvia Federici whose most recent book is Caliban and the Witch, Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Specific details on this event will be communicated as details are finalized.
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Support for these programs comes from BC Federation of Labour Women’s Committee, CUPE BC the Federation of Post Secondary Educators and the BC Government Employees’ Union (BCGEU), as well as CUPE Local 389, City of North Vancouver Employees, CUPE Metro District Council, Megan Ellis & Company and others. Claudia Bernal’s work is supported by the Canada Council and Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. In addition the projects have been supported by a tremendous amount of volunteer labour.
For information about the IWD events or to arrange interviews with Claudia during her time in Vancouver, contact Louise Leclair: 778.838.0699
ABOUT CLAUDIA BERNAL
Graduated in Philology and Languages from the National University of Colombia, Claudia Bernal immigrated to Quebec in 1991 and completed her master's in French Linguistics at Laval University. Her ongoing research on the different modalities of language lead her to concentrate on the multiple forms of esthetic expressions. She graduated in 1999 with a BA in Visual Arts/Creation at the University of Quebec in Montreal and started an MA in History of Latin American Art in Mexico City. Claudia Bernal has developed a particular approach focused on the fragmentation of urban space and its impact on society and culture. The concepts of movement, migration, space, and identity are recurrent in her artworks. As an interdisciplinary artist (painting, installation, video, performance, etching), she stands out for the originality, energy and power of her works and for her involvement in the artistic and culture scene in Canada and abroad. She has presented both collective and solo exhibitions in Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Argentina, Mexico and Germany. Colombia-born and Canadian, Claudia Bernal lives and works in Montreal.
About the exhibit: Monument to Juarez: Only Women Who Die a Violent Death Go Directly to a Paradise http://www.chez.com/altprensa/bernaljuarezengl.htm;
Monument to Ciudad Juarez is a video-installation inspired by what at first were considered isolated events but now are clearly the expression of an historical sacrifice, a holocaust against women: the violent assassinations since 1993 of more than 300 women in the city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
In abandoned cars and run-down motels, in wastelands, the outlying desert and the suburbs of this cursed city, the bodies of these women and girls were discovered murdered after having been kidnapped, tortured, mutilated, sexually brutalized and strangled according to some sort of fixed ritual. To these 300 must be added an unknown number of disappeared women whose bodies were never found or claimed.
"With the video installation, I pretend to 'raise and bury' in a symbolic way 300 murdered women in order to fix the facts (the murders) in the past and give these a certain a-temporality (through the burying)," says Bernal. "Thus, I bring to the forefront the real violence against women in general, and the brutality of the Ciudad Juarez assassinations in particular."
Located at the border with the United States, a "no ones and everyone's land," Ciudad Juarez is a city of transit where thousands of women survive dreaming of "paradise". This impressive artwork combines ceramics, wood, ropes, fabrics, stones, corn tortillas, and a video projection where the desert, haunted by feminine silhouettes, is a metaphor of isolation, solitude, and uprooted identity.
It is no coincidence that Gallery Gachet http://www.gachet.org is hosting this exhibition, which runs until April 2. Located in the Downtown Eastside, where the disappearance and death of more than 65 women went unheeded by authorities for years, Gallery Gachet has a mandate to support issues of mental illness, abuse, and trauma and to provide a focal point for artistic discourse around these issues. In that sense, Bernal’s artwork expands the dialogue on gender-based violence, promotes healing, and highlights those who survive, as well.
About the Organizations of Wish Drop-in Centre, PEERS and PACE
These organizations provide support, advocacy and training to current and exiting sex-trade workers in Vancouver.
Details: www.wish-vancouver.net.
http://www.peers.bc.ca,
http://www2.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca/dbs/redbook/orgpgs/2/2329.html
For information about the IWD events or to arrange interviews with Claudia during her time in Vancouver, contact Louise Leclair: 778.838.0699