Artist uses artificial intelligence to protest against sexist violence in Bolivia

Photo Credit To Agencia EFE

The Bolivian artist Rilda Paco mixes artificial intelligence, digital collage and embroidery to protest against sexist violence in Bolivia, through an exhibition in which she shows women demanding justice, migrating or mothers burying their daughters who are victims of femicides.

“More than an exhibition in a museum, it is a protest in a museum demanding justice and also to remember those women who are no longer here,” she said.

The exhibition “Mujer Peligro Mujer” that is exhibited at the National Museum of Art in La Paz shows 22 works by Paco and an installation with which it aims to reflect the risks that a woman runs on the streets, in daily life and also the “ danger” that a girl represents when she questions, studies, questions and transgresses.

Paco commented that women are often “on the verge of danger” of being raped, sexually harassed and even having their lives taken away and since 2013, when the law came into force to guarantee a life free of violence in the country until the currently counted 1,106 women who died from sexist violence.

The Bolivian artist recalled that she was a victim of media violence when she exhibited a controversial work of the Virgen del Socavón in 2018, the patron saint of the Oruro Carnival declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which unleashed death threats against her and her family, and caused her to be harassed by various groups to keep her quiet.

“I became a danger to them and since I was a danger they had to throw me away, they had to do something to silence me,” Paco said.

For the artist, it was “urgent” to show through art what is happening with women so that people question what is happening and what we can do to prevent these situations from happening.

Thus, she decided to explore with artificial intelligence to “rescue stories” and create images of women, most of them indigenous, which is mixed with digital collage and the touch of color in the works is given by the embroidery of words, flowers or details of women’s clothing in each piece.