Words beyond the Death Row

In the frame of 5th World Congress against the Death Penalty, held in Madrid in June of 2013, and as part of the program of activities of PHotoEspaña 2013, I curated the audiovisual project Words beyond the Death Row, which combines excerpts from testimonies by death row inmates from around the world, and their relatives, with images of foremost contemporary artworks. The testimonies describe the reality of the conditions of detention in the death row, while the exhibition aims to visually explore the emotional universe that these testimonies manifest.

Instead of being an illustration for the voices, the project intends to articulate a constructive dialogue from the symbolic between the recorded testimonies and images of artworks by contemporary artists. Therefore, I avoided a tour through the images that have traditionally been related to the death penalty, either in a generic way, as the electric chair, gallows or lethal injection, or by showing portraits of the convicted and executioners, or photographs of cells and execution sites.

While these images allude directly to death, the testimonies in this project are touchingly full of life: a life of loneliness, anger and confinement, in which the universal vital incentive of human contact prevails over adversities. Words beyond the Death Row is inspired by that contact: the importance of the letters coming from outside, the high value given to the brief hours in which the prisoners enjoy the visits of their loved ones, and the international support are the main conveyors of hope for the inmates.


One of the testimonies narrates the awaiting of a woman for visiting her imprisoned husband. She resumed the experience in a wish: that of the moment when "the time belongs to us for a few hours". Expanding margins, this poetic language game synthesizes the complex implications behind capital punishment. Humans have always known that the time does not belong to us, but some hours do (they are called life)... Who owns our hours?