In Black Against Violence (2015-2025)
The principal feature of this action was to cover shop windows, businesses, schools and town halls in black. It is a way of expressing grief for the femicides, as well as a means of raising awareness and combating this problem through a series of signs and slogans that can be downloaded from the website. All the materials are registered under a creative commons (CC) licence for their free distribution.
“This initiative, which has developed much beyond a mere information campaign in shop windows, has laid the foundations for inter-municipal collaboration in which technical staff and politicians share their determination to apply working methods, tools and resources in order to prevent, draw attention to and condemn gender-based violence”.
It has become a transmedia social action that forges networks between institutions and citizens; channels that focus attention on gender-based violence, introducing actions of this type into new areas for the first time ever in an attempt to secure the commitment of economic, education, sports, cultural and social communities, as well as associations, in order to offer a collective response rejecting gender-based violence and femicides.
Among the many events organised, an ephemeral stand was created in public spaces and a publication was produced which, in addition to documenting the experience, provides practical guidance on how to launch the initiative in other contexts.
Project porfolio En negro contra as violencias
Although the initiative began in shops, little by little it was taken up by the whole community who, during the months of November – and more specifically in the week of 25 November – shared on social media various activities or images in which they promoted the campaign, whether through posters, T-shirts or other materials.
One of the most remarkable aspects is that it was embraced by a very significant number of men, who claimed it and made it their own.
We arrived in Brussels
On 6 November, a delegation made up of representatives from various local and provincial institutions, along with the organising team, landed in Brussels to present the In Black Against Gender-Based Violence campaign at the European level. It was a particularly important moment, not only because of the potential ripple effect of presenting the initiative at the European Parliament, but also because it strengthened the ties between different city councils.
The fifty or so participants were received by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) at the time, Lithuanian Vilija Blinkevičiūtė and Portuguese João Pimenta Lopes, respectively, as well as by other FEMM MEPs from various countries. We emphasised the urgency of placing a response to gender-based assaults on the global political agenda and of working to end the invisibility of harassment.
In addition to speaking at the European Parliament, we wanted to leave a mark and extend the impact, so we planned a performance in the Parliament’s main square (we even contacted Spencer Tunick to propose a collaboration, which ultimately wasn’t possible); there was no limit to the excitement and energy of that moment. The two days we spent in Brussels allowed us to share experiences among the different teams and municipal leaders from the participating city councils and to refine our strategy.
Temporary installation
In Santiago, in 1918, responding to the voices calling for more information, we produced a newspaper that was distributed throughout the municipality, and designed a temporary triangular space with panels that displayed data on the extent of gender-based violence and some key points for recognising it. The triangle, built with the collaboration of Finsa and the Paideia Foundation, was not only informative but also intended to interact with those who approached it; placed in the middle of the Plaza do Obradoiro, it offered shelter to pilgrims and served as a meeting point, like a ‘hut of wishes’: you could write a card and hang it on the wall – one side for messages of hope and the other for personal experiences. At the end of the campaign, we collected thousands of wishes and experiences that reflected the importance and scale of the issue. The temporary triangular space was set up again the following year in Santiago’s Praza Roxa and, years later in 2022, was installed in Pontevedra by one of the collectives created within the framework of the campaign, Gráficas en Negro, with the support of the City Council and the Provincial Council of Pontevedra.
Logotypes and posters
They are two complementary logos: one for the place or name, accompanied by ‘In Black’, as in ‘Compostela in Black’, and the other, ‘Against Violence’. Later, the version ‘In Black Against Violence’ was adopted so that it could be understood in other places and contexts
The downward-pointing triangle is a lunar icon that symbolises water and the female sex; it is little known and, therefore, carries no connotations that could make it objectionable. In this way, the meaning implicit in the triangle completes the slogan ‘Against violence’ without needing to use ‘gender-based’ or ‘male violence’. Later, I realised that, as placed on the front of the T-shirt, it also functions as a powerful shield, a strength enhanced by the Blender typeface that Nik Thoenen designed in 2003 (and redesigned in 2017 in collaboration with Vienna-Based Font), a square and robust typeface to which I added an expressive cut.
I chose black because gender-based violence has many faces, but the most dramatic is death, and black is a symbol of pain, mourning, and at the same time, of rejection, struggle, and strength. Moreover, it is a colour that can work for any establishment – it is a uniform non-colour, with no different shades, unlike other colours.
In 2021, the proposal was the image of an iceberg, an iconographic resource to highlight that we only perceive part of the problem—the most visible one, the murders—while all the rest remain hidden: abuse, insults, distrust, control… Making that hidden part visible was what I tried to do graphically, using the same typography and the same use of black; that preserved the identity and made it widely recognizable. They were distributed in shops, along with bags and strips of paper printed with the same words that appear on the iceberg, so that each store could create its own scenography.
And in 2022, the general idea was the creation of a memorial to remember the murdered women. We know that what is not named does not exist, and that is why we wanted to transform numbers into names. We created an augmented reality experience, activated through a QR code from posters placed in the shops. From a smartphone, one could access an inverted pyramid-triangle where the names of all the women murdered in recent years in Galicia, and in the last year in Spain, appeared; at the end of the animation, the slogan arose: “For you, for me, for all… Not one more.
Several audiovisual pieces were produced to showcase the campaign. You can check it out on the YouTube channel.
This is how the initiative began in 2015, in Compostela, with the support of local shops.
In 2020, as we could not leave our homes, we carried out a video performance in which the artist Mónica Mura symbolically wrapped the city of Compostela with a black ribbon, with the help of local women.
Publication
In 2024, we published a book compiling the initiative: "Sempre libres e vivas" (Always Free and Alive)
SERenidade, 2018 (cadena SER)
Premios Paraguas, 1ª Edición, 2016