By Emma Batha
LONDON, Jan 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A young British artist is commemorating domestic abuse victims killed by their partners or exes with a series of unfinished portraits – drawing each woman for just one minute for every year she lived.
“The pictures highlight how these women’s lives were cut short. They are incomplete because the women were never allowed to live their full lives,” said Holly Ringrose, who is posting the images on social media.
Britain, like other countries, has seen a surge in domestic abuse during lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19, which have left women trapped at home with their abusers.
Ringrose was inspired by U.S. artist Adrian Brandon, who created a series of unfinished portraits of Black people killed by police in a project called “Stolen” that attracted global attention last year following the death of George Floyd.
Nearly 2 million people a year in Britain, mostly women, suffer some form of domestic abuse, according to official data.
The Femicide Census, a project run by a charity that collates data on women killed by men, says a woman is killed by a current or former partner every four days in Britain.
The youngest victim drawn by Ringrose is schoolgirl Ellie Gould who was 17 when a classmate stabbed her in the neck 13 times in May 2019 after she ended a short relationship with him.
The oldest is Elize Stevens, a 50-year-old mother-of-three and welfare officer who was stabbed 86 times by her partner in March 2019.
