Juan Cevallos has a new exhibition in Taitung Art Museum, Taiwan titled The Real Virus. Below is his artist statement.

As a visual testimony that certifies that we exist in the world, photographic portraits allow us to transcend death and be reborn in front of the eyes of those who look at us. This project shows portraits of women and girls who were victims of femicide during the health emergency in Ecuador caused by COVID-19. During the long months of isolation and quarantine the cases of femicide increased significantly in Ecuador, the home, which was supposed to function as a family shelter to avoid the spread of a potentially deadly virus, was transmuted into a crime scene where many women were trapped along with family members who became their executioners.

The portraits of the victims have been printed on disposable beverage cans, showing faces without natural figuration, which have been destroyed to make the viewer’s eyes imagine the terrible torments these women and girls suffered when they lost their lives as a result of male violence.

The bodies of many of the victims were thrown in ravines, water reservoirs, or abandoned in the streets, for this purpose I used disposable cans as a canvas to depict the portraits as an analogy of the little interest that the murderers of the victims showed when they discarded the bodies of their wives or daughters like any ordinary object.

Format: 20 beverage cans (Approx. 18cm x 12cm) and Photographic emulsion.