Fowler Museum hosts “Femicide: Death, Gender, and the Border” panel examining violence against women through art

Alicia Gaspar de Alba (Right),professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), looks at Alma Lopez (Left), her wife, visual artist, and lecturer at UCLA, and answers questions from attendees during the “Femicide: Death, Gender, and the Border” panel at the Fowler Museum at UCLA on Wednesday March 5, 2025 in Los Angeles, Calif.(Ana Sanchez Venegas | The Corsair)

Alma Lopez, visual artist, panelist, and lecturer at the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and LGBTQ Studies Program at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) smiling during the questions and answers portion of “Femicide: Death, Gender, and the Border” at the Fowler Museum at the UCLA, on Wednesday March 5, 2025 in Los Angeles, Calif. Lopez has designed the book cover for “Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera” edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, moderator of the panel, and Georgina Guzmán, and her art has addressed the femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.(Ana Sanchez Venegas | The Corsair)

Rony Armas (center), artist, photographer, and graphic designer, asks a question to panelists, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Alma Lopez, and Judithe Hernandez during the panel “Femicide: Death, Gender, and the Border” at the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, in Los Angeles, Calif. Mr. Armas stated, “The responsibility and obligation of an artist is to stand up and do something … we are not making money off of our art, …but what do we do then, as artists, when we're beat down on the daily, right with media and it's power and its money, that we just can't match at the moment, right? What can we do?” (Ana Sanchez Venegas | The Corsair)

Alicia Gaspar de Alba, professor of Chicano/a Studies at UCLA, said that “femicidio” is “more than just a translation of femicide.” The Spanish term was interchangeably used with English during “Femicide: Death, Gender and the Border,” a panel hosted by the Fowler Museum, to describe countless murders, kidnappings and sexual assaults of young women that have occurred in Ciudad Juárez. 

These ongoing crimes were initially brought to light in 2001 after eight bodies were found in the Juárez Valley desert. “Juárez is now known as the femicide capital of North America,” said Gaspar de Alba, who was moderating the panel. Moved by the lack of dialogue surrounding the femicidio, she based her novel “Desert Blood” on the violence against women near the border.

Panelist and artist Judithe Hernández acknowledged this topic being swept under the rug. Many of Hernández’s artworks, such as “The Weight of Silence #12,” portray red handprints covering a woman’s face, a symbol that would later be used in women’s rights protests as advocacy for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement. 

“I don’t know if I had anything to do with it. Maybe I did,” said Hernández. “If that’s the case I’m so honored that these (artworks) have been thought of… as a sign of protest.” 

Describing her portrait “La Llorona Desperately Seeking Coyolxauhqui,” panelist Alma López said, “I wanted to allude to this idea that sometimes we’re raised to be good girls and not scream, not yell, not protest. It can be really harmful if you don’t speak out… If you allow something to happen.” 

In the portrait, a serpent gags a young lady in pain who is surrounded by roses and shadowed by the Virgin Mary. Lopez refers to moon goddess Coyolxauhqui in her title, who was dismembered by her own brother in Aztec mythology. She is symbolized in pieces by both López and Hernández—representing the gruesome deaths many women in Ciudad Juárez experienced.

Audience members had the chance to ask panelists questions, mostly in regard to artists’ power towards social change. “Art leaves a legacy of the best of what we are,” López said. “It requires being involved in taking a risk. You have to be brave.”

Gaspar de Alba concluded the panel with a reminder. “The one power is the power to create… Power in Spanish is poder. What does that mean? We can.”