Abstract

This thesis discusses the issue of femicide in Canada, exploring the cause and effect of violence towards Aboriginal women and considers where the media and the government have failed to help families of victims to create proper memorials for those killed and how artists have attempted to fill this void. I explore how three specific non-aboriginal artists have, in this absence, created memorial projects, with very different results. These artists are Betty Kovacic (A Roomful of Missing Women) whose work commemorates the Downtown Eastside murders and the Highway of Tears disappearances; Dianne Anderson (ProjectX), who creates memorial performances for missing women in the Prairies; and Pamela Masik (The Forgotten) who calls attention the Downtown Eastside murdered women. I am aware that other artists have created work on the subject, notably Rebecca Belmore, whose work Vigil is widely known and Stan Douglas whose series Every Building on 100 West Hastings documents the disappearances. However, I have chosen to focus my attention on lesser-known artists with whom I was able to discuss the work personally and whose work centers eliciting compassion for the victims and their families.