Abuela: An Album of Memory and Identity Through Photo/Graphics

This project from ideation, to the transcript, to the design was completed by the artist as an ode to storytelling and family histories.

An excerpt from page 111 –

“We are a product of those who came before us – reflections of family stories passed down from generation to generation. We tell stories of our journeys in life to create an identity, of self and of our family – as we remember, uncover, and process these pieces of our past. The experiences of great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and children shape and articulate our own lives.

We find notions of belonging through uncovering family portraits, frozen moments in time thawed under the eye of the viewer. It has been a rite of passage to me – a passage fading to the digital age of photographs and phone camera rolls with limitless storage. Sacred visitations to the flashes of our past and the participation in an inter-generational ritual that has bred my many self-reflections and explorations of my identity, may become an artifact of antiquity. Here lies the intersection for memory to live on. Preservation of memory and visual storytelling leaves space for generational identity to endure.

To reflect on and acknowledge the trans-generational traumas we possess – trauma of religion, of death, of abuse, of substances, of not knowing. I believe there’s a subconscious connection to experiences inherited from our ancestors, imprints on the soul, in the way one might inherit the color of their eyes or the texture of their hair.

The nature of photography demands a kind of presentation. A presentation of self, of environment. A nature that embodies a quality performance, an idealized representation or reflection, a version of reality that lacks the ability to record the truths hidden between the moments captured. These truths may be discovered through the practice of storytelling. There is an ephemeral essence to archival images and the imagined landscapes sculpted in the manipulation of this documentary material – an essence that reflects and refracts familial and personal truths.”