Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Rut Martinez Hernandez
About my work
In Spain between 1936 and 1939, Francisco Franco led a military uprising that snatched power from a democratically elected government. Many people, among them my great-grandparents, were tortured in the dictatorship’s prisons. Both my grandmothers received inhumane and degrading treatment by the mere fact of being from a republican family. My father also suffered torture in his fight for freedom. Torture practices lasted through and after Franco’s dictatorship, well into 1978. There is still a need to stop situations where people are inhumanely treated because they think and live differently.
I have used home textiles: sheets and white cloth. This symbolises many Spanish families who have silenced their loss of loved ones: they cry only at home, for fear of reprisals, even 40 years after the dictator’s death. The fabric with flowers symbolises fresh flowers on the countless common graves of people without identification in our country. They are still anonymous. We are a country without memory.
- Rut Martinez Hernandez
About me
Rut Martinez Hernández is from Terrassa, Spain. She is a maker and craftivist who has been involved in many activist projects related to housing, violence against women and the preservation of the environment. She is a graduate from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia holding a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy with a focus on political science and feminism. She currently works as a technician in social housing for the Terrassa city council.
Rut has lived in Spain, China and Italy. She has been interested and involved in social and environmental issues from a young age. She got involved in politics at age 16 when she became one of the youngest members of the local branch of the green party Iniciativa per Catalunya. Today she is an outstanding member of the feminist group Dones amb Iniciativa within this party.
She has always been connected to the arts in one way or another, but it was not until recently that both her activism and her love for art came together. For the last five years she has participated in several craftivist projects such as ‘End Gun Violence’ (Chicago, United States), ‘Yo no soy tu abuela’ (Barcelona, Spain) and ‘Cotorres’ (Mallorca, Spain.)
The last collective exhibition in which Rut participated has been Women and Work at the Sagrada Família Civic Center (Barcelona, Spain).
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