Congratulations to Angie Melchin, Latin American Studies concentrator who graduated in 2010. Angie is an invited participant in an exhibition commemorating the women killed in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

The exhibition, entitled “400 Women,” will be held in the Shoreditch Town Hall, in London, England, from 12-28 November 2010. This project was conceived by artist Tamsyn Challenger in response to the brutal murder and rape of more than 400 women over a decade in the border town of Ciudad Juárez and the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Some 200 exceptional artists were invited to paint an image, based on the Mexican tradition of retablos, of one of the murdered women. Tamsyn Challenger has written that the project originated in 2005, when she was commissioned by BBC radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Challenger went to Mexico and met with families of the victims. She believes that each of the images created for the exhibition “will stand as a statement against gender violence” as well as against the impunity with which the perpetrators of the murders – and of violence against women in general — continue to operate.

The exhibition raises important questions about collective commemoration of the dead and disappeared. Challenger has obtained over 100 images of the murdered women through Amnesty International, the group Nuestra Hijas de regreso a casa, and the Casa Amiga Rape Crisis centre in Ciudad Juárez. When no image is extant, the artists have incorporated the woman’s name into the piece, as Angie has done in her etching.