She's gone...

Any human being experiences a shudder when they enter the exhibition hall of the Carme Chacón Equality Space in Madrid. A strange sensation invades the visitor who finds himself immersed in a collection of women's clothing. A green T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a long embroidered dress, a faux fur coat, a lucky sweatshirt worn before entering each exam, a top and jacket bought especially for a wedding?  

They all stand out because they are all authentic, worn by young, mature or older women, all of them killed by their husbands, boyfriends or partners, in solitude or before the horrified gaze of their children, often also fatal victims of male violence. Noa, Michal, Simona, Irene, and also Ana Orantes, the woman from Granada who was subjected to systematic abuse by her husband for forty years. Hanging from the ceiling is the red dress she wore when she dared to denounce her ordeal publicly, live on a television programme. That denunciation was her final death sentence because her abuser murdered her by burning her alive.  

Keren Goldstein Yehezkeli, curator of the installation, explains to Atalayar how she conceived this exhibition: "It was six years ago when a young Israeli compatriot was murdered by her partner along with her two young children. It was just another event, one of many of the same kind that unfortunately happen every day on a global scale. But it made me sick to my stomach and I decided to conceive an artistic expression capable of provoking an emotional shock in everyone who contemplated it. Thus was born this exhibition, which, like the very tragedies it evokes and recalls, has no expiry date".  

Coinciding with the first month of the Hamas attack on Israel, the project, which travels from city to city around the world, was presented in Madrid by the Israeli ambassador, Rodica Radian-Gordon, who insisted on the stark violence suffered by women in wars, with special emphasis on that perpetrated by Hamas against them, both those who were murdered in horrifying conditions and those who were kidnapped and forcibly taken to Gaza on that fateful 7 October. 

Commenting on the Hamas attack, Rodica Radian-Gordon said: "In addition to the indiscriminate and systematic massacres and atrocities against the vulnerable and innocent civilian population, Hamas terrorists sexually assaulted women in a brutal and systematic way". "There is no doubt that the common thread runs between the recognition of gender-based violence as a crime and the recognition of systematic gender-based violence as a war crime and a crime against humanity. Only in a more equal world will girls, women and vulnerable individuals in general be able to achieve such a basic right as the right to live in physical safety and dignity," she said.

The 22 garments on display, all of them living symbols of so many other unique and unrepeatable lives, cut short by gunshots, knives or arson, come from so many Jewish, Arab and Christian women from Israel, Costa Rica, Honduras, Czech Republic, Trinidad Tobago, Aruba, Cyprus, Greece and Spain, and will be augmented by the garments of a murdered woman from each country in which the installation is exhibited. Contemplating the installation while listening to the soprano Mercedes Benzaquén singing the Sephardic song "Duerme mi angélico", completes an atmosphere capable of enlivening the most dormant feelings.  

When Keren Goldstein hatched her idea at the home of President Rivlin and his wife Nechama, the aim was to touch hearts and provoke minds, to raise awareness, to encourage introspection and to promote a meaningful and inclusive discourse against gender-based violence. And, from there, to urge policy makers around the world to speak out, take action, develop tools and reach concrete solutions. Because all forms of oppression of women based on violence because they are precisely that, women, can and must be eliminated. 

And there is a way out. According to the United Nations, 47,000 women and children worldwide are murdered every year by their partners or other family members. And, unfortunately, more than a few cases are never solved.