JARDIN DE MI PADRE

The starting point of this reflection is a photograph that revealed my father’s survival during his abduction by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, commonly known as the FARC]. The photograph, a Polaroid concealed among the minor myths of my family history, is an object I have never seen. The guerilla fighters sent a Polaroid snapshot of their captive to my family as a proof that he was still alive.

This project begins from the search for that uncertain photograph, but it reflects a process of rediscovery that transcends the event in itself. It is a post-memory exercise that speaks of our finitude and contingent nature, that explores the legacy of the past as our only mode of survival. “The absence of this fetish photograph activates a performative visual essay that has recourse to the mechanisms of appropriation and collage in order to remove autobiographical and documentary photograph from their conventional frameworks” (Joan Fontcuberta, Kiss the Bird, Jardín de mi Padre, 2020).

I would like to have the support of PhMuseum to produce the first solo show of this project based on the architecture and structure of my photobook Jardín de mi Padre (Musée de l'Elysée co-edited by RM, 2020).

In Jardín de mi Padre project I explore how archives and post-photography help us to imagine and speculate on personal and collective memory. Personal memory exists, but we always incorporate fictitious elements whilst summoning the past. Reality contains elements of fiction as fiction includes elements of reality.