La pintura como medio para representar el daño psicológico en víctimas de abuso sexual infantil

Abstract

This research project entitled "Painting as a means to represent psychological damage in victims of child sexual abuse", was born from the objective of making visible how the lack of interest in mental health in Latin America directly affects people who have gone through a case of CSA. Children and adolescents have been made vulnerable by society throughout history, being at the mercy of an individualistic world, these victims who manage to survive face a greater challenge, to cope with the trauma throughout their lives. The sequelae left by CSA can affect the normal development of the child, harming him or her in the short or long term, however, when we talk about a person's normal development, it refers to the process in which he or she acquires behavioral, emotional and sociable skills. These skills are affected by the psychological damage related to the abuse, causing depressive disorders, anxiety, suicidal behavior, sexual problems and difficulties in relating to their environment, which can escalate into adulthood. That is why the present artistic proposal seeks to represent through painting how the ASI has a negative impact on its victims, painting has been a tool of historical representation, from the era of the Neanderthal who used it to record his day-to-day actions, to the present that it is used as a means of expression and protest against the social problems of today. For this proposal, several relevant data have been collected related to both the social problem and the artistic object, in this way several artists are presented who, as such, are not directly involved with the initial theme, but who fulfill the main role of expressing through their paintings the situations and emotions that affect the human being. These works not only talk about delicate topics such as child sexual abuse or violence, but also touch on emotional points such as fear, anger, disgust, death, including works in which they express a more positive emotion, emphasizing that the research of the different paintings focused on the area of portraiture. This artistic work portrays in a series of four paintings the growth of a person, presenting four stages: childhood, adolescence, youth and adulthood, reflecting in each face the increase in psychological damage in a figurative way, accompanied by the degradation of the background, going from a light tone to a darker one, alluding to emotional decline. All this with the aim of making the viewer question the reason for the physical decay of the subject on canvas. In relation to the research, it was difficult to find precise information on how CSA affects the victim in the long term, more articles were found on the short-term consequences, on prevention, on the importance of treating infants and above all, the vast majority focus specifically on women, emphasizing that this also affects men. This is not a bad thing, but it is interesting how society forgets about people who did not get support at the time and had to learn to live with their traumas. Similarly, in the process of inquiring about Ecuadorian artists who deal with this problem was very complicated, most focus on the action of abuse, but not on its long-term consequences, it is common to see a work about abuse represented through a child than an adult.