Flores de Femicidio / Femicide Florals is Natali Bravo-Barbee’s memorial for women murdered by men (femicide) in her native land of Argentina. There were 327 femicides in 2019, in Argentina alone. She began by researching each woman’s story and creating an archive for each victim that included media stories and traces found on social media.

With an understanding of each woman’s history, Bravo-Barbee then hand-crafted a unique 3-D paper flower using an antiquarian photographic process called cyanotype, and used it as a cameraless technique that incorporated shadow images of lace, flowers and other vegetation. She completed each floral piece by attaching a hanging tag listing each victim’s name or No Nombre (as they were listed in news reports), honoring the woman and recalling the ancient tradition of placing flowers at the grave of the dead. Each flower took as long as 10 hours to complete. This entire project took her two and a half years to complete.

The flowers serve as a physical manifestation of each lost woman and drive home the enormous scale of the loss and how violence against women is prevalent and needs to be addressed worldwide. 

Bravo-Barbee states :
“When someone says 327 women were murder by men, that is just an arbitrary number that one may or may not be able to imagine. I have built these cyanotype flowers as a representation of each woman. When one stands in a room with all these flowers, the overwhelming number of them has an impact when a life, a person, a woman is associated with each. In the U.S. the media haven’t adopted the usage of the term ‘femicide’ to describe gender based crimes against women every time it applies. If they did, it would become apparent how problematic these societal issues are in individual communities and how dire the need to address them is.”

This installation is currently on view at Galerie Lucida, 18 Wallace Street, Red Bank, NJ