35mm slides, slide projector, audio (2:45)

For a long time, I have avoided making work about my ethnic and racial identity. Oftentimes I feel as though it is what I am expected to make. I experience a constant tension between showing pride in my identity, but also a desire to be subversive. I feel much anxiety and frustration about how people perceive me and my work based on what I look like and where I come from. Considering recent political incidents, I hope my work can show me and other Caribbeans through a more humanizing and empathetic lens, beyond being people from vacation islands, beyond being commodified, or an imperial possession. 

Using 35mm chrome slides, I photograph objects and symbols that reappear throughout my life in the diaspora, and that reinforce and remind me where I come from. Many of these are routinary items utilized in my family’s home, or photographs carried to Indiana from Puerto Rico. Being far from the rest of my family and yearning for a place out of reach, I constantly find a way to romanticize these items. I enjoy the idea of a shared metaphorical and physical mark that is impossible to erase or mask. With the audio, I want to elevate the importance of storytelling, something present in diasporic families as a way to preserve culture and family history.