You have given to the world your songs

Title: You have given to the world your songs

Poem with shapes of the hand of 1 to 10, in ASL

Year: 2020

Measures: 140 x 112 cm

Technique: HD Video, projected on the wall (color, no sound) 1’51” and diagram on paper (transcription in signw riting, translation in English and Spanish) in digital inkjet printing with pigment lasting acid-free paper

Edition: 2/10

Foundation Collection Engel

Poem signs in American Sign Language (ASL) used 10 ways to hand, organized in a sequence from 1 to 10. This type of sequence rhyme visual structure is a recurrent theme in the poetry Deaf, as well as what is the Tenth in the tradition of popular poetry in oral/written in Latin America. Invited by the artist Deaf Douglas Ridloff to collaborate in a performance at the Whitney Museum, New York, in this work Benitez takes as its starting point a lithograph by the artist Elizabeth Catlett, titled I have given the world my songs (I have given the world my songs), 1947, and invites the viewer to reflect on slavery, the struggle for black liberation, and the role of the artist in the expression of that struggle through art. The diagram on paper contains a transcript created in signw riting -the system of signs for the movement notation and sign languages conceived by Valerie Sutton in 1974 - and a translation into English and Spanish.