Graphic design powers increased awareness of gender-based violence in Peru
By Carla Samon Ros
Lima, Jul 19 (EFE).- A new experimental book that seeks to shake consciences and eradicate the femicide pandemic has now been published in Peru, where every three days a woman is killed as a result of gender-based violence.
They are killing us by Adriana Quesada and Brayan Pinto is a book packed with interactive designs that seek to encourage Peruvians to take off the blindfold and see beyond the chilling reality that obstructs society from achieving long-sought gender equality.
In Peru, a woman goes missing every 90 minutes, and every 10 days, three of the missing show up dead after being murdered only for being women.
Quesada and Pinto used this shameful fact as a starting point for their “condemnation” work, which was published in black and white, and through which they intend to make the reader emotionally invested, thanks to a series of graphics, including X-rays imagery, manuscripts, burnt sheets, threads, and collages.
“As designers and visual communicators we bear the responsibility of searching for efficient means with higher impact to generate empathy and get the reader involved,” Pinto tells Efe, adding that this strategy could be considered the graphic designer’s way of educating people.
Pinto, a graphic design and direction graduate of the Toulouse Lautrec Institute, says that he was looking for alternatives to the commonly seen explicit visuals of raped women in Latin America, which only highlight their faces and bruises.
Thus, he and Quesada experimented with X-ray imagery, burnt paper, collage-like photo manipulations and bold black ink inscriptions to create a series of visual metaphors.
“We used black ink to stress machismo and gender stereotyping because it leaves stains representing an infection that contaminates the Peruvian society,” Quesada says.
The book is a collection of high-profile femicide cases that has shaken the country in recent years, such as that of Eyvi Agreda, a 22-year-old woman who was the target of an arson attack on a Lima bus in 2018.
