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| Emely Peguero, Feminicide victim. |
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| What are you going to do for this to change? |
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| Your sister, your daughter, your mother could be next. |
How many of you know the term feminicide? The term feminicide was firstly introduced by Jill Radford and Diana Russell to represent the “gendered and endemic nature of violence against women” (The Mantle). In Dominican Republic, it is a growing phenomenon that does not show any signs of slowing down. Every year more than a hundred women are assassinated by their spouses, boyfriends, and/or a male whom was previously involved in their lives. For my final project, I will be delving into this issue and the lack of action from the Dominican society residing in Dominican Republic as well as in the United States. The project consists on a series of posters, some of them being illustrations of the victims and others being typographic posters which challenge the viewer to think about their lack of contribution in regards to the matter.
From an early stage in my life, I became aware of masculine superiority and its protection coming from a dominant patriarchal system. Feminicides being justified with the sentence “She must have done something to trigger him” or “she could have avoided this situation”. Our chauvinist culture continues to enable the brutal behaviors against women, and victimize the perpetrators and nobody seems to pay attention. This act of resistance will make you question your involvement in your community, it will shame you for settling with the idea that the jurisdictional system will take care of the issue when in reality, they are at fault. You have a mother, maybe a sister, a cousin, an aunt, a friend; what if they were the victims? Do you rather take action before it affects your loved ones? Or will you do it now that is affecting strangers? According to ‘Acento’, a Dominican newspaper, from the year 2005 to 2017 more than two thousand and four hundred women were killed; two hundred women on average per year (Mery Dorrejo). That is two hundred lives that were not protected by any sort of legislation before or after the occurrence. We do not count on any laws to regulate gender-based crimes, although they claim to, we do not officially have any specific penalties for these crimes (Global Americans).
It is apparent that as a country we cannot dismantle the jurisdictional system which continues to fail women. This project also serves as a push for my community, to be motivated to research about what is happening inside courtrooms and outside in the streets. It is a wake-up call for a population that ignores their surroundings and that chooses not to be politically involved with anything due to fear and impotence. I want my audience to think about power, the power we possess and we think we don’t, and the power patriarchy holds over us. “The capacity to see power matters’ said Nato Thompson in his ‘Seeing Power’ book, it is a skillset that is needed to dissect its importance and effects, and how it operates in our culture. In order for us to challenge it and advocate for issues such as feminicide, we must be capable of recognizing it. By utilizing the same shaming approach which the Guerilla Girls used, I intend to make people uncomfortable with statements whilst also positively depicting those victims whom were full of life and were gone too soon.
Link to project : https://www.instagram.com/kcallmonte/
Link to project : https://www.instagram.com/kcallmonte/
“Works Cited”
· Thompson, Nato. Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century. Melville House, 2015.
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