Residuos de un contacto: Manipulación

Residuos de un contacto (Residues of a contact) is a personal attempt to visually represent the complex concept of trauma in narrative form, through self-portraits and experimental processes.

“The term trauma arises in the context of medicine to define a wound that catastrophically affects the body. According to Freud, trauma consists of two events that impact the psyche: a first event which cannot be processed as it was generated in childhood; and a second event, which triggers the memory of the first event and signifies it as traumatic” (Ruth Leys, 2000).

Residuos de un contacto (Residues of a contact) is a personal attempt to visually represent the complex concept of trauma in narrative form. During my childhood and adolescence, I went through various medical experiences that conditioned my body's self-perception. Repeated medical manipulation over the years began to signify my experience as traumatic. But it was not until my adulthood that an episode of physical gender violence ended up solidifying the set of experiences as a trauma, which defined my complex and particular perception about my body.

I use self-portraits and manipulation with my hands on the surface of the negative and photographic paper, as well as the surface of my real skin, as a resource to grasp and retake the agency that was taken away from my body.