This is Not a Memorial

November 2021 – March 2021 

Continuing their artistic investigation into challenging and changing the narrative around femicide, Mexico-based Las Illuministas and the North East’s Pink Collar Gallery presented an exhibition at Durham Castle.  

This is Not a Memorial, by Rosie Stronach, was part of the Re-Imagine feminist art collaboration project, in which over 100 artists from the UK and Mexico created artwork which told a different story about femicide, highlighting it as a global pandemic. 

Rosie Stronach’s work had already exhibited in two of the online exhibitions and has been further developed into public art. The North Shields-based artist’s activist work was on display in the Tunstall Gallery in Durham Castle. The installation replaced some artefacts in the gallery with contemporary works, which address the startling statistics of femicide in the 21st century. 

Motivated by the misrepresented female narratives in the media and many of the missing or hidden female histories in our records, she confronted the invisible and erased lives of women in our world heritage sites. 118 Women was a clay bust engraved with the names of 118 women who have lost their lives at the hands of men, while partner piece 118 Flowers takes an environmental standpoint, while also adhering to the classic iconography of a memorial, with the seed paper flowers due to be planted in spring 2022.

A photograph of the art installation in Durham Castle, which included a clay bust engraved with the names of 118 women who have lost their lives at the hands of men.