"The Forgotten"

Vancouver artist Pamela Masik has created an exhibition in memorial to the downtown east sides forgotten missing women. She has 69 portraits of women who have been missing from the downtown east side for over a decade. Twenty six of her featured women have been confirmed as victims of Pickton. Each of these paintings created on a large canvas which she sometimes physically slashes to re-create the brutality these women endured. Recently she has stated that she is releasing a 70th portrait of herself. Her reasoning is as follows: "When one woman is violated, all women are. It could have been me.”

Her goal is to expose the fact that society has forgotten these marginalized women she also states she feels obliged as an artist to shed light on social injustices. Pamela Masik states on her website her reasoning for undertaking this work as: "The intent of this work - not just creating the paintings, but the exhibition of the collection with performance and video/photography of the process - is to raise awareness of the social problem inherent within our society."

This body of work has taken four years to complete and has been featured in the Vancouver library square (seven pieces) as well as the full collection on display during the Vancouver olympics in a gallery behind the olympic village. Feel free to check out here work or find out more info at her website:http://www.theforgotten.ca