Art and Security in Femicidal Cultures: women’s art practice in Oaxaca and Quintana Roo (Mexico)

Despite significant advances in research, policy and law, feminicidal violence
continues to be a major problem for women’s human security in Latin America.
Pineda (2019) argues that the extent of feminicide and impunity in the region
constitutes a ‘femicidal culture’, which normalises feminicidal violence, and
constructs women as disposable and replaceable. In contemporary Mexico,
women’s art practice occupies an important role as part of resistance to feminicidal
violence. Recognising this, and sharing the views of scholars who argue that art can
help us see and feel politics and security differently, in this study I ask two
questions: what does women’s art practice reveal about feminicidal violence in
Oaxaca and Quintana Roo? What does women’s art practice do in response to
feminicidal violence in Oaxaca and Quintana Roo? To answer these questions I draw
on data gathered during eight months of ethnographic fieldwork with women artists
and activists in Oaxaca and Quintana Roo, Mexico, from February - September 2023.
I analyse this using feminist poststructural theory that emphasises the social
construction of gender and (in)security, and feminist theories from Latin America
which emphasise that women’s bodies are both sites of struggle and violence, and
of energy, vitality, joy and resistance. My findings demonstrate that while women
negotiate and resist harms along a continuum of gendered insecurity in their
everyday lives, crucially, through their art practice, women can and do resist and
change femicidal culture at the everyday level. Creating art puts into practice the
‘radical’ potential of human security, by supporting women to defend and care for
themselves as individuals-in-collective, and to safeguard their vital core. My study
builds on the work of scholars who argue for a feminist reconceptualisation of
security, and contrasts with theories that continue to rely on securitisation and that
perpetuate harmful, gendered myths of protection.