Women from the alley, slaughter house and the river

This piece is part of the project Brigada de Dibujantes del Barrio Cuba (Drawing Brigade visiting the Cuba Neighborhood), from Guayaquil, Ecuador. It’s located at the city’s southern east edge, next to the Guayas river and it is a place full of contrast. We wandered through alleys filled with wooden houses old and new, dust streets, next to paved street and a big university with pools, the local slaughter house with buses full of animals coming in and out, bus stops where buses where cleaned, lonely and huge warehouses, schools full of children playing, meat markets with very strong odors, etc. We immediately connected with the people most of whom have lived there all their lives, and love to tell stories of how ‘Barrio Cuba’ has changed over the years.
The visits started in 2014, we did some interventions in the streets, to activate the sharing of stories of the neighborhood, to understand the context we were in. We also showed our drawings in the meat market called “La gallera”. At the end of the project we had another exhibit at a gallery that featured our art and the release of the book titled “Born and Raised, attempts to enter the Cuba Neighborhood” (2019), which chronicles the artists brigade.
This project took place during a specific period of my life; where I was experiencing some changes in my work of art. The drawings I did at the beginning, show my interest in the physical space, perspectives and the journey. At the end, as I became a feminist, I tried to shed some light to women that lived in neighborhood.