Dislocated Birds

Do you find so familiar being back home? But, do you feel like there is a ghost coming over to make reality dislocated and strange? Perhaps the questions that 79,000 deported Guatemalans in 2023 are still asking themselves.

In 2023, over 79.000 returnees to Guatemala were counted. An upward trend only surpassed by the records of 2019, before the pandemic, when more than 105,000 Guatemalans were deported because of their irregular situation abroad.* However, the multiple causes of return have a psychosocial impact on those who have been forced to return to a country where the limited conditions for their reintegration are tasks that remain pending to be changed. 

This ongoing project is the result of a long stay in my native land Guatemala. After many years living abroad I had the privilege to get back home for seven months. The experience has become an exercise to aboard into the daily life that appeared familiar and predictable, however it also revealed itself to be foreign, dislocated and strange, as an imprecision or failure of memory. Dislocated Birds is about the encounter with scenarios and narratives, located both in reality and in dreamlike states, images that portray symbolic or playful representations, as well as personal experiences in the context of being back home. 

*Source - International Organization for Migration.