A total of eight women They have offered the stories and the clothes they wore the day they were sexually assaulted in the exhibition ‘What were you wearing? Dismantling patterns on sexual violence’, presented at the Costume Museum this Friday, March 10, by the Government Delegation against Gender Violence of the Ministry of Equality.
The exhibition –organized by the Ministry of Equality and the Ministry of Culture and Sports and curated by the Volando Veng collective– can be visited from this Friday, March 10 to April 30 and reflects through their stories on the questioning and the guilt they were subjected to by the clothes they wore the day they were sexually assaulted, as they explained in the presentation of the exhibition.
“The exhibition has tried to shed light on patriarchal structures and highlight women’s experiencesthe support networks woven between them, their ability to fight and resilience and encourages us to believe in a fairer future for all women,” said the deputy general director of state museums, Mercedes Roldán.
In this way, he invites viewers in the main room to reflect on why eight women heard the question “what were you wearing?” after experiencing an episode of sexual violence.
“He took advantage of me and my disability. I was unfortunate because having a disability I did not know how to defend myself. Was it my fault, or was it his fault? I don’t know… Yes, he had it because he was a profiteer,” said Julia, a woman with intellectual disabilities and one of the samples in the exhibition.
A participatory exhibition
On the other hand, The exhibition also offers visiting women to leave a garment if they have suffered sexual assaults. “We have come across many cases that have suffered sexual assaults and could not participate, we proposed a space so that they can get a piece of clothing,” said the curator of the exhibition. Also, viewers will be able to contemplate a repair space sample as place of refuge to distance yourself from pain and connect with the emotional and hope.
The initiative was carried out with the aim of creating a visual representation thereof and for thisused the testimonies collected in personal interviews with student survivors of sexual violence and recreated in an exhibition the clothing they were wearing at the time of the attack.
