Art Against Brutality

Claudia Bernardi is an installation artist, painter, and printmaker whose artwork is impacted by war and post war periods. Born in Argentina, Bernardi was affected by the military junta (1976–1983) that caused 30,000 desaparecidos (disappeared). In 2005, Bernardi founded Walls of Hope in a war zone in El Salvador, a community-based art, education, and human rights project that has been replicated in many countries around the world. Bernardi designs and facilitates collaborative art projects with survivors of political violence, survivors of torture, survivors of sexual violence, and with communities forced into exile. Bernardi is emerita professor at the California College of the Arts.

"There may be nothing more significant in today's world of toxic polarization and rampant violence than mobilizing resilience, resistance and solidarity. With her life-long journey as an artist and activist, Claudia Bernardi understands and exemplifies in these pages a profound gift: The creative act – the communitarian audacious courage to create – defies the grip of cruelty and humiliation and gives birth to the hope and voice needed to remember, imagine, heal, and transform. A must read for all of us pursuing a world in which love and beauty overtake the forces that divide, diminish, and dehumanize." - John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame"The murals that Claudia Bernardi has brought to life across nations – woven together with the hands, memories, and courage of communities scarred by war – stand as luminous testaments to the enduring power of art. Through her guidance, survivors become co-authors of their own visual histories, transforming trauma into testimony. From the ashes of violence, creativity persists – stubborn, radiant, and unyielding – insisting on truth. In the colors and contours of these murals, suffering is neither erased nor silenced; it is honored, transfigured, and given voice." - Daisy Zamora, winner of the XXIII Casa de América Prize for American Poetry"Claudia Bernardi, the world-renowned painter, has spent much of her life guiding people and communities in their search to recover from horrific violence. In El Salvador, Argentina, Guatemala, Colombia, and other damaged places,Bernardi has made her home among communities of the traumatized – survivors of massacres and wars – and worked with them in creating art to recover their lives. Art Against Brutality is a gorgeous, redemptive story of Bernardi's work with survivor communities as they struggle to paint the murderous violence they managed to survive.In its unfolding revelation of community and truth, Art Against Brutality is an essential book." - Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote"Bernardi has created a singular work of art and history that speaks to the curative power of artmaking for the wounded collective heart. Here, survivor fingers serve as "improbable paintbrush(es)" as the bodies of the interred and disappeared reappear on the canvas of once buried memory. It is a lesson in re-membering for all of us." - Cherríe Moraga, author, Native Country of the Heart"Art Against Brutality is a searing book about how human-made catastrophe can be transformed into communal acts of truth-telling and remembrance. In murals shaped by survivors and guided by Claudia Bernardi, art enters war zones and sites of devastation – even places scarred by massacre and rape – and becomes a vessel for shared witness. By turning despair into collective solace, survivors begin to reimagine their bond with a past that refuses to fade. Bernardi's lifelong commitment endures as a fierce and necessary offering of hope." - Nora Strejilevich, author of A Single, Numberless Death