Mujeres Creando is a Bolivian feminist collective devoted to political street art interventions. They do not define themselves as artists but as political activists. Their acts and performances are always public, autonomist and de-colonial. Abortion is a constant theme of their grafitti and performative actions. But Mujeres Creando also engage with formal art spaces as to convey their political messages. In 2014, they presented the installation titled Space to Abort in the São Paulo Art Bienal that expresses in a concise manner a street intervention performed in La Paz. The opening of the Bienal coincided in time with national general elections in Brazil as well as with the two botched abortion-related deaths of Jandira and Elizângela, two women who lived in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area. As previously reported by SPW, public authority at municipal, state and federal levels entirely silenced on these tragedies. Reflecting the growing conservative climate of the period, which has further escalated, in the last two years, Space to Abort was threatened of censorship (In Portuguese).
SPW has chosen to feature Space to Abort in this month’s Art&Sexuality session in order to mark September 28th, the International Day of Struggle for Safe and Legal Abortion. This is so because the regressive political climate in regard to women’s reproductive autonomy that currently prevails in Brazil in many other contexts requires strong and daunting responses.
To watch the full Abortion street art intervention (in Spanish)
To learn more about Mujeres Creando