Video installation [8:26 min]
Negative Horizon, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan [2016]
STATEMENT
What is identity, and is it possible to construct it from the experiences we appropriate? Identity questions memory through an exercise of representations that allows us to convey the experience of the people involved. It is situated in a middle ground between collective and personal memory, between lived and acquired experience. Thus, memory, in the blurred boundaries of fiction and reality, becomes a fragmented experience that, when shared, is absorbed as one’s own.
For generations of Cubans who have lived and/or were born in post-1959 Cuba, traveling outside the island’s borders has become an aspiration on which a life project revolves. Multiple reasons have limited the travel experience: the constant economic crises, the low purchasing power of the vast majority of the population, the ever-changing restrictions imposed by the government, and the arduous visa processes, which limit their quotas due to a large number of Cuban immigrants. In this way, the travel experience itself becomes a segment of memory longed for by many.
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Video Installation
The video installation can be adapted to spaces with different formats. The video is projected on a table with a glass top. The camera is placed at subjective viewing angles so that the audience’s view coincides with the position of the shots in the video. A transparent vinyl film covers the glass of the table, creating a semi-focused effect of the video image.
On a wall near the projection, the object resulting from the action is displayed: the author’s identity card covered with customs stickers.
