Propuesta artística contemporánea sobre el lenguaje simbólico floral como medio de visibilización de la violencia doméstica hacia la mujer

Abstract

Domestic violence against women constitutes one of the most persistent structural problems in Ecuador. Gender roles, rigidly constructed and historically entrenched, have contributed to the perpetuation of stigma surrounding the reporting and public visibility of this form of violence. Within this framework, the present project seeks to foreground domestic violence against women as a negative phenomenon of our historical moment, through a contemporary artistic proposal grounded in experimentation and in the creative production of symbolic and communicative codes articulated through visual representations of plant life. Accordingly, the project presents a series of nine floral still lifes featuring encoded messages, conceived as an artistic work that reinterprets the language of flowers within the context of intimate partner violence. From both functional and symbolic perspectives, floriography—historically employed as a form of covert communication in contexts of emotional repression—is reclaimed in order to resignify its traditionally romantic or decorative associations. Flowers thus emerge as vehicles of denunciation, capable of exposing dynamics of control, submission, and silence that have been naturalized within the affective and social imaginary, particularly in relation to women.