La Piñata y La Locura I, 2024

This original artwork is a 1 of 1 acrylic photo transfer onto two sheets of corrugated metal. It is from my series Mining For Some Sort of Continuity. A study of the fleeting nature of memories, this series focuses on how personal archives constru...

This original artwork is a 1 of 1 acrylic photo transfer onto two sheets of corrugated metal. It is from my series Mining For Some Sort of Continuity. A study of the fleeting nature of memories, this series focuses on how personal archives construct a mobile, personal, and ephemeral archive that is fundamental to the construction of diasporic identities. This artwork features an same image of my aunt at a birthday party in the 1970s, which has been transferred onto two sheets of corrugated steel. The original image was taken as a long exposure, which has captured the motion of the event while blurring faces long the way, turning the image into a hazy recollection rather than a clear memory. The green-yellow tone of the image is a product of its age, but the transfer onto the corrugated metal adds a new layer of meaning, with the rusted texture of the steel reflecting the erosion of time and the uncertainty that often surrounds childhood memories, especially those intertwined with migration. The figures in the photograph are blurred and indistinct, granting me creative freedom to reinterpret the scene and reconstruct a narrative that may not align with the actual events. This piece questions the reliability of memory and how distance—both temporal and geographical—affects our recollection of past events. The work embodies the idea of constructing a diasporic reality from fragments of memories, where truth is fluid and shaped by both loss and imagination.