Borrowed Grandparents

Self-portrait photography project where I recreate with 9 actors and in their own homes a memory that does not exist for me: The relationship with my grandparents.

Moník Molinet creates an imaginary memory of life with grandmothers and grandfathers that now becomes real through the photographic act. Nine actors assume these roles in intimate, everyday scenes constructed from personal anecdotes and desires. To achieve this, Molinet stages 29 situations in four homes in Havana belonging to the same actors.

This project challenges the perception of memory and identity, utilizing both digital and analog formats. It also employs theatrical techniques like Brecht’s "Verfremdungseffekt", an intentional distancing that avoids catharsis and reveals the illusory construction of the

represented world. Both modes manage to connect the imaginary and the real, creating a new mode of existence through the photographic act.

Molinet reflects and visually creates her own desires through self-portraiture. In doing so, she pushes the boundaries of art and reality, leaving behind mere representation to become a symbolic field that invites the viewer to be part of this new memory —or to create other

memories from their own experience—. All this prompts us to question to what extent art can fulfil certain emotional lacks and create a powerful and living visual memory. - Curador Lorenzo Torres Hortelano

Artist Notes

Starting from the fact that memory is not reality, but only the memories that we believe we have lived, this self-portrait photographic project aims to create a memory of what I did not live, to fabricate, through the will and the resources of representation, memories of a relationship with my grandmothers and grandfathers. I asked several friends about the most important memories with their grandmothers and grandfathers, these writings full of emotion, longing and inevitably, sadness, marked the way.

If living is the first requirement to generate memory, can this in its fragility be manufactured? Created without denoting the seams of its manufacture? In this project I investigate the answer to these questions. Nine actors accompany this search, contributing their experiences, sensitivity, talent and even their own homes.

I am interested in taking a concept to its ultimate consequences, this work is made with this premise, the emotions created in its realization remain in me and in the rest of the team.

"This project does not intend to deceive the spectator, it is not documentary photography, it does not seek the truth. Rather, they are performative gestures, acts of intervention where what matters is not fidelity to the memory, but the possibility of it existing." - The Cuban Observer

I am interested in taking a concept to its ultimate consequences, this work is made with this premise, the emotions created in its realization remain in me and in the rest of the team.