'Lucía's room' and Atravesadxs', two exhibits about the emptiness and pain of femicides

Agustina Ordoqui

08/16/2021 10:30

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 08/16/2021 10:30

On the morning of October 8, 2016,

Lucía Pérez left her home for the last time.

Time stood still in his room, in the T-shirts that were left on the half-made bed, in the palette with dried paint, in the unfinished dreamcatcher and in the bottle of perfume that he did not use again.

Marta Montero and Guillermo Pérez left the room intact

, although they do not expect their daughter to return one day.

What they hope for is justice.

The piece that belonged to Lucía, the 16-year-old adolescent who was the victim of a brutal femicide that remains unpunished, is now an open space.

After being on the Rambla de Mar del Plata in February of this year and at the Pettoruti Museum in La Plata in April, “El Cuarto de Lucía” can be visited in

the courtyard of La Manzana de las Luces

until September 10th.

Lucía's room is in the Patio de la Procuraduría in La Manzana de las Luces

The idea of ​​making a private place public came from a conversation between Marta and the journalist Claudia Acuña.

"It was a way of approaching

an issue that was always presented as a case or as a figure

, and never on a human scale," Acuña tells

Clarín

.

“The room is the last scene of life, the place where Lucia went to sleep, to dream, and that cannot be a nightmare. This is stopping one minute before death.

Each femicide - he adds - is an opportunity for reflection so that there is no next one

, but if each femicide happens as one more, there will be one more. For this reason, we wanted to create a space outside the pain and daze to think about what is happening to us and how to stop it. We want to take care of the living Lucías ”.

The fourth remembers who Lucía Pérez was.

A girl who loved to do crafts, who skated

and who did not lack a surfboard, like many other teenagers her age who grow up with the sea in the background.

Someone who listened to bands like Los Redondos or Los Rolling Stone.

That she

had a rosary hanging from her bed

and the photo of her first communion framed next to a poster of La 25 drawn by herself.

That he had handwritten a phrase from Intoxicated: “

Some things today turned out the other way around and no one could help me

.

I box with life again, she tries to knock me out. "

The sample was previously in Mar del Plata and La Plata

The room

is an exact copy of the one that was left empty in Mar del Plata

, except for the T-shirts, the rosary and the perfume bottle, which are the same as the original room, and “some details, such as the paint stains on the floor because

Lucía was always painting

”, according to Guillermo, her father.

He and Marta used their vacations to be able to come from Mar del Plata to accompany the exhibition.

The mother is a nurse

and is on the front line in the care of patients for Covid-19, but despite having had a year and a half required by work obligations, she never stopped demanding justice or selling sweets at fairs in order to continue paying the costs of the cause.

"To show the room is to convey my gaze of love towards Lucía, as something beautiful and

another way to do justice without speaking, to make the cause visible

," he tells

Clarín

on the opening day, while preparing brochures in the tent where activities are offered awareness, including a presentation by the theater group Piel de Lava.

The father and mother of Lucía Pérez, in Mar del Plata, her city.

When entering the room, Marta affirms, people come out in a different way:

“The sample passes through your body. When you see it, that room goes right through you ”.

Marta says that when she looks at Lucía's room, she also thinks of the other empty rooms: “

This room belongs to everyone, it could be your sister's, your mother's, it could be yours

. It is one of the 179 Lucías who have killed this year ”.

Opening Friday is cold, but clear.

Silence reigns, interrupted only by the shout of

"Lucía Pérez, present!"

.

A lady with her two granddaughters begin to tour the place.

First they see a window and, when they look out, a bed with a light blue bedspread.

Perhaps the woman thinks of her granddaughters' room;

Perhaps your granddaughters imagine their own rooms or in those of their friends.

On the wall, images of different marches are projected, including the October 19 women's strike called by Ni Una minus a week after Lucía's femicide.

In front of the bed, on a television, the

scenes of the oral trial in which those accused

of killing her

were acquitted

are repeated over and over again

.

On November 26, 2018,

judges Aldo Carnevale, Pablo Viñas and Facundo Gómez Urso

, in the Oral Criminal Court No. 1 of Mar del Plata, released Juan Pablo Offidani and Matías Gabriel Farías from the charges of femicide and abuse. sexual aggravated by carnal access.

In August of last year, however, the Criminal Cassation Court of the province of Buenos Aires annulled the ruling and ordered a new trial.

Meanwhile, the family waits and seeks to keep Lucía's memory alive:

"We cannot keep quiet,

if we are not accomplices."

Traversadxs, first-person accounts

In the exhibition "Atravesadxs", the photographer and visual artist Eleonora Ghioldi shares

30 testimonies from relatives of victims of femicides,

transvesticides and transfemicides, who - like Lucía Pérez's mother and father - continue to demand justice.

The documentary project is exhibited on

the façade of the Evita Museum with six billboards

accompanied by a QR code to read and listen to the voices of the families.

It can also be visited virtually until September 3.

Facade of the Evita Museum

As of Monday, August 16, in addition,

16 images that are part of this work will be exhibited at the Mercado de Avellaneda Cultural Center

, with the intention that it will travel through all the provinces and incorporate more testimonies from the localities where the exhibition circulates. .

“This project started eleven years ago with another show I did, 'Guerreras', on gender violence.

In a march on March 8, I met Gustavo Melmann, Natalia's father, who went to see the exhibition, and he connected me with other relatives of victims.

That's when I began to work harder on the issue of femicides, ”Ghioldi tells

Clarín

.

Gustavo, father of Natalia Melmann, in "Trapped by femicide"

His goal, he adds, was to build first-person testimonies to open up the space and make it easier for families to tell their stories from their place, without intermediaries. The exhibition was built in the middle of the pandemic, from where the idea of ​​wearing a chinstrap with the name of the victims began, and it was inaugurated on June 3, the day that Ni Una Menos turned six years old.

In this way, Yuyo García - Micaela's father, murdered in 2017 and on whom the public administration gender training law is inspired - recalls that

his daughter's femicide was on probation despite having three complaints of rape

;

Say recounts the fight her sister Diana Sacayán was fighting in defense of trans people when she was killed in 2015;

o Déborah Vial recounts how difficult it is to see the children of her cousin, Nancy Segura, grow up without the presence of their mother.

Yuyo, Micaela García's father, in "Travesadxs por el femicidio"

"All these families are united," Ghioldi remarks and concludes: "They share

a sense of struggle to reach justice

and it is that same struggle that allows them to move forward after so much pain."

"Lucía's room"

can be visited from August 13 to September 10 in the Patio de la Procuraduría of the Manzana de las Luces Historic Cultural Complex, Peru 222 (CABA), from 12 to 19 hours.

The schedule of activities that are part of the exhibition can be seen on the page www.manzanadelasluces.cultura.gob.ar.

"Atravesadxs"

is from June 3 to September 3 at the Evita Museum, Lafinur 2988 (CABA) and on the site www.museoevita.org.ar.

From Monday, August 16, it can be visited with free admission from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Mercado Cultural Center, Colón 450 (Avellaneda).

ME