This series of drawings was made in a five month period during my weekly visits to the Women\u2019s Protection Police Station in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.
\nWhen I arrived in the Police Station, passing through the main door, I always found sitting on the same bench a feminine silhouette waiting to be attended. As if I was one of these women, I used to sit on that same place, observing their faces. Their eyes looking down, the silence, the stillness and the held back tears, the clothes, the shoes, the differences. Everything seduced me, I thought about how many women had sat on that same bench. Each one with a different story. I wanted to register that moment, without exposing those women. With a sketch book and pencil, I started drawing this waiting moment.
\nThey waited such a long time that I could register them with each detail. Focused on the lower part of their bodies, the results were bodies divided in half. They were in half not only because I chose one part to observe and draw, but because the women are always divided between love and pain.
\nMany times they still love the partner who commit violence against them, other times they love God, that use the voice of man to ask them for patience and resignation towards suffering.
\nI drew compulsively, each new woman a new register, focusing always on the same direction. The drawings took shape of different women, who always sat on the same place, on the same bench.
\nIn the end of the work, I talked to each one and I noticed how they needed help. They needed a person to listen to them, to share their problems and I listened, writing their statements. They are wives, mothers and daughters, women who suffered physical and psychological violence.
\nThese drawings don\u2019t show faces, don\u2019t reveal who the women are. They are just lines that form different legs, feet, words\u2026 <\/p>\n