Photos: Roiner Ross, MPPC
under the International Women’s Daythis Thursday, March 9, the photographic exhibition was inaugurated “Faces and scars, from an individual problem to a collective reality”, in the spaces of the National Art Gallery (GAN), in Caracas. The activity was headed by the People’s Power Minister for Culture, Ernesto Villegas, and the Vice Minister of Image and Space Arts, Mary Pemjean, and with the participation of 16 women who showed their scars in the exhibited photographs.
Source: MPPC Press (Text: Franquis Toledo / Photos: Roiner Ross)
Minister Villegas maintained that the capitalist system has sought to end cultural differences and establish an aesthetic monopoly. “The monopoly system is profoundly inhuman and generates unhappiness inoculated towards women, when rather they are transmitters of the deepest feelings of love”, he commented.
The head of Culture valued positively that 16 cancer patients have made the decision to exhibit their bodies in the photographs that are shown in the GAN.
“This exposure will have consequences in the way in which Venezuelan society conceives the phenomenon of this disease. The woman who has or had breast cancer must be made visible, it is not about showing who she was, but who she is. You are part of who we are; they are not part of a look into the past, they are the present,” she stated.
Villegas added that in art there are models that, consciously or unconsciously, individuals choose. “There is a cultural environment that imposes what is convenient, we must make a cultural change in the way we look at ourselves,” he emphasized.
Likewise, he invited the general public to visit the graphic exhibition that is exhibited from Thursday to Sunday at the GAN.
Photographs that break stereotypes
Regarding the activity, Kerellys Lugo Gil, coordinator of the initiative, mentioned that the exhibition seeks to break a civilizing model that imposed stereotypes on society, specifically on women. “The idea of this project is to generate an awareness campaign that seeks to reveal, beyond the disease, the human condition of women suffering from breast cancer and to break with physical stereotypes that are the product of hegemonism,” she said.
She also assured that the Bolivarian Revolution has supported the fight for gender equality and women’s rights to raise awareness in society. She explained that the images of the exhibition, captured by photographer Maxwell Briceño, seek to transcend the disease and show the painful beauty of a body wounded by a disease that is on the increase and considerably affects the psyche and female self-esteem. “It is about opening a space for reflection on the values of aesthetics and conventional beauty,” she said.
For his part, Rodrigo Benavides, National Photography Award winner, joined the team that evaluated the photographs and celebrates that the exhibition has a social relevance due to the value of women. “These images come to a museum to transmit something beyond art. The record of life, of a representation of women, just as they want to show themselves, in the midst of their physical and spiritual fight against this disease,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jericó Montilla indicated that the exhibition is a look at our body and rejected the patriarchal system that denigrates women in all their expressions. “The woman is light, love, truth, she is the always reborn of good values,” he said.
Women who thank life
Zenaida Peraza, who is one of those portrayed in the exhibition, declares herself healthy and full of life, and invites women and men to touch each other as a preventive method for breast cancer. “Cancer can be overcome with encouragement and a positive attitude towards life. We are living testimony,” she commented.
For her part, Mirelis Arraiz, an oncology patient for more than 11 years, said she was proud to show off her scars. “Life is beautiful and you have to enjoy it to the fullest,” she said.
The exhibition “Faces and scars, from an individual problem to a collective reality” recognizes the courage and struggle of women inserted in a social context that leads them to live under social pressure to hide their bodies, as a result of the dominant culture imposed by the stereotypes of the patriarchal and capitalist system.
