Familia

'Familia, 2023' Salvaged and Upcycled MDF, Cement, Fertiliser mix, undocumented soil, oxide pigments, chia seeds. 

"Familia is a layered family portrait that deals within the context of slow-burn estranged relationships of an immigrant “nuclear family” and the uneasy questions around death-places that are not in anyway connected to one’s birthplace. Furthermore the work is pendulant through the lens of comprehending what the act of place and home marking is, through a history of continuous and consistent geographical mobility and displacement. 

Presenting 4 “plinth-like” objects, the work juxtaposes and plays with this idea of undocumented soil - soil that was extracted through construction industries from its geographical birthplace and mixed in with soil from other regions - as a deep gesture to explore the ideas of transnational displacement.

Additionally, the incorporation of discarded, and upcycled materials alongside the implementation of construction materials furthermore entice this pseudonym of the over-labouring nature that comes with being an immigrant in a “first-world/exploitative” country, through the act of proving one’s self to government and citizens, but their family as well. As well as, the intense and complex labouring nature of maintaining a nuclear family together through often obscure and complicated places and situations. 

The work acts more of a portrait of these ideas rather than people, but to some degree this work reflects the many feelings, complexities, conversations and challenges my family and I are in the midst of facing. As time moves on, and I begin to have a family of my own, questions of resting places and everything I have been through have been presented in perspective, and I can’t help to think whether I will put my own children through the same or will it be different."