"Memories and loss have always had a significant influence on my work as an artist; however in 2000 I began to concentrate more obviously on women – our issues, emotions, relationships and our physical nature.

I began addressing the subject of Mexican women being raped and murdered in Ciudad Juárez, with oil painting and drawing, trying to find symbols, and develop an appropriate language to express my feelings towards this terrible event that brings out the continuous mistreat of women.

As my concentration on the women of Juárez intensified I began creating original stencils in the form of butterflies - the butterfly image being evocative of women’s pelvis and vagina regions while simultaneously suggesting fragility and femininity.

My aim is to remember the victims for who they were: gentle, fragile beings, virtually all very young women bursting out of the cocoon of childhood and adolescence metamorphosing, like butterflies, into womanhood.

The butterfly stencils are transferred to fabrics or papers of different colours and textures. I then mix the transfers with other elements: at times with oil paint or additional textures like sand or pigments; and/or with drawings of the pelvic region in ink and graphite; and/or with maps of Ciudad Juárez; and with texts that refer to a single girl - her hair colour, what she liked, where she was last seen.

Finally all of these parts are assembled into one series or another, and in each I add a label with a victim’s real name and the date she was found. My desire is to create individual pieces that are as unique as each girl was herself and give them back some part of their lives and voices.

This project is dedicated to the hundreds of Mexican women that have been raped, mutilated, murdered and then forgotten in the desert around Cuidad Juárez."

Exhibition runs through July 3, 2010