La Sirena, 2023

This inkjet print (Edition of 3 + 2AP) 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 funda...

This inkjet print (Edition of 3 + 2AP) 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. In this artwork, various archival images are transferred onto a corroded piece of copper, presenting three figures on a beach: a man drinking a beer, another lying on the sand, and a woman walking towards them. Each figure is drawn from separate photographs taken by my mother at different beaches throughout her youth. This piece, an early exploration into the style of traditional Mexican ex-votos, uses the copper’s natural tones to evoke the warmth of a sunny day, with the transfer allowing the material to bleed through the images and blur the boundaries between memory and imagination. Through my parents’ family photographs and anecdotes, I attempt to reconstruct a connection to these figures from my past, despite the physical and emotional distance created by years of separation. The work illustrates the fragility of memory—how recollections can be altered or lost over time, especially when filtered through the lens of familial storytelling and cultural dislocation. For instance, when I showed one of the original photographs used in this piece to my Tio Tato (the man standing up in the work), he failed to recognize himself, mistaking the image for my father, despite him not having been on this trip.