Haydee Landing "Collective Memory" (Puerto Rico)

Article 1: Right to Equality

420 x 590mm woodcut 607 x 428mm paper size

The human being finds himself part of a continual transformation. Society confronts us with a series of values and roles that elicit a response. We may accept or reject or try to modify them.

Marimar Benitez describes her work as follows: “ Haydee Landing’s graphics form part of Puerto Rico’s resistance to colonialism, from the use of the identity conflict as an artistic theme, to the struggle to survive as an autonomous culture. The artist belongs to this tradition of the art of political resistance and cultural affirmation, which she uses to deal with it’s most corrosive aspect: the internalized colonialism.

She does not deal with scenes of torture and persecution; instead she depicts what the great Puerto Rican poet, Luis Palés Matos called “the inner beast” Haydee Landing’s images give visual form to the terrible inner life of the colonized. Their strength transcends the specificity of Puerto Rico’s colonial situation and gives witness to the dehumanization perpetrated by the powerful.