June 5, 2006


CI Meeting Participant Profiled in New Documentary


"Can a village heal after the massacre of its children? A Berkeley artist journeys into the jungle of El Salvador to battle repression and obliteration with the life-affirming act of creating art."

-from www.artistofresistance.org


Claudia Bernardi is an Argentinean painter, printmaker, and installation artist who lives in Berkeley, California. Her work is informed and deeply affected by having participated in investigations of human rights violations against civilians in association with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (AFAT).  Ms. Bernardi has participated with the Team in the capacity of creating the archaeological maps at the exhumation sites in investigations in Argentina, Ethiopia, Guatemala and El Salvador.


In "Artist of Resistance" filmmaker Penelope Price takes us into the tiny village of El Mozote, where Claudia Bernardi joins the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team to conduct and document the exhumation of mass graves in order to discover the truth: are the graves a result of a massacre or a battle between two armies?


Slowly, the exhumation uncovers the bodies of 131 children whose average age is 6 years old. When the El Salvadorian government grants amnesty to those responsible for the massacre, Claudia returns to Berkeley filled with rage. She interprets this reality through a series of prints. She then returns to El Salvador armed with paints and brushes to paint murals with the children who had inherited this atrocity.


Please visit www.artistofresistance.org for more information about the documentary.


Claudia Bernardi participated in Coexistence International's April 2006 meeting Networking Coexistence & Related Fields at the Meta-Level.