I will wait

An elephant without a herd is a broken being, something separated him from the others: a duel, an illness, an unexpected wait, or the breaking of his soul. I am an elephant. I am strong and vulnerable at the same time. My skin, although thick, is very sensitive and can get sick from a bee sting. I return to earth to protect myself, to take care of myself. I wait, giving time the space where it rages, unforgiving. I hold. There where nobody sees me. There where I hide. I walk on tiptoe, with the weight already released is a ghost on my back, on my contracted shoulders, on the straight line that was once a curved one, in the positions I have learned, in the memory where is the route back to the herd. I just don’t have the map.

I am Venezuelan, living in Argentina. In 2018 I emigrated in a forced way along with thousands of Venezuelans. I did not have time to say goodbye, or to close cycles. Trying to maintain an affective bond in the distance, under the promise of a reunion, made me enter a harsh and self-destructive time, in which anxiety and uncertainty were almost permanently present. The uprooting, the unfinished business, the emptiness of not belonging and the uncertainty, are part of the conceptual axes of “I will wait”, which I developed during trips through the Province of Buenos Aires, with the desire to meet the new person in which I was becoming and a country that does not belong to me. The result is a mixture of landscapes and interventions with a body that represents my lost soul.