Borrowed grandparents

This photographic self-portrait project recreates family scenes in domestic spaces with actors to construct a memory I do not possess: the relationship with my grandmothers and grandfathers.

This self-portrait photography project recreates family scenes in the domestic space to build a memory that I do not possess: the relationship with my grandmothers and grandfathers. Some of the scenes were conceived from the experiences of my friends; others, from the projection of a personal longing, thus exploring the limits between life and representation, between the natural and the performative.

How is this very specific relationship visually and emotionally constructed? How is fragile memory shaped? Is it possible to visually recreate intimacy? To what extent can art, through the resources of representation and visual language, build a memory so powerful that it makes up for an emotional lack?

To give life to these images, we held a casting in Havana, in which more than 100 people participated, from which we selected 9 actors and actresses who played my grandmothers and grandfathers. We recreated 29 scenes in their own homes, using the everyday spaces of the architecture of various neighborhoods in Havana.

These domestic scenes were captured in both digital and analog formats, in order to highlight two narrative possibilities: the immersion of the spectator in the scene through the "fourth wall" and its breaking through the Brechtian "Verfremdungseffekt," an intentional distancing that avoids catharsis and reveals the illusory construction of the represented world.

It is precisely through the cracks of this estrangement of the gaze that the memory of my grandmothers and grandfathers is generated.

In my work I am interested in questioning the relational hierarchy that, through visual narratives, determines what matters and what does not. In this case I question and try to correct the low value that is given to this specific type of grandparent-grandchild relationship, in a system that exalts romantic relationships above all, then mother-child, then siblings and so on, delegating the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren to very low places on that scale of value. I think it needs to be told and revalued, I try to do so by approaching it from the lack, so that other people can see what they do have or identify with me. In this case, the camera is for me an instrument that has the power to connote importance but also a device to question the hegemonic gaze that constructs us.