(ses·ma·ri·a)

The project (ses·ma·ri·a) contemplates the complexities of language, the migrant experience, and the intricate web of hybrid cultural identities. It is premised on the weaving of words and images into an experimental hybrid anthology

Phosphenes:

15.569km me separam. do verde dos seus olhos e dos bigatos da goiaba. as goiabas que roubei aos 7, aos 10, aos 12. quando ainda caminhava de pés descalços. quando vivia de joelhos ralados.
joelhos que ardiam. coração que arde, tal mercúrio escorrendo no ralado. 15,569km. me separam dos meus. da carne. o não poder chegar. sempre no liminar. a escolha política de morrer de amor e de saudades todos os dias.

15,569km come between. from the green in your eyes and from the maggots in the guavas. the guavas I stole at 7, 10, 12. when i still walked barefoot.
when my knees were always grazed. stinging burning knees. heart that burns, just like mercury dripping down broken skin. 15,569km come between.
from mine. from flesh. from arriving. always in the between. the political choice of dying of love and longing every day.

_____

The segment titled 'Phosphenes' is part of the project at large titled (ses·ma·ri·a). With this project, I contemplate and draw from complexities of languages, experiences of migration, and the intricate web of hybrid cultural identities. (ses·ma·ri·a) is premised on the weaving of words and images into an experimental hybrid anthology that focuses on the concept of a non-language. Using ambiguity as creative strategy, the construction of this non-language breaks free from grammar, syntax, and technicality. The interplays of meaning in images and texts function as a shattering of prior signification to offer new possibilities in communicating marginalised subjectivities. The project refuses assumptions of otherness and aims to highlight the vulnerable condition of not fully belonging in a world of rigid constructions.

The weavings of texts and images are conceived on themes that explore the vulnerabilities of the migrant experience such as language, sociocultural and socioeconomic constructions, stereotypical representations, alienation and amorphous concepts of home. Texts and images are weaved in the form of collages in each piece to form an experimental hybrid anthology. These pieces engage with diverse styles of poetic prose, and images are never meant to be descriptive of words featuring diverse genres including archival imagery, self/portraiture, as well as more abstract and microscopic images.

Importantly, all of the writing for this project is done in both my mother tongue Brazilian-Portuguese, and English. It is vital that I am both the writer and translator of these texts, as this act of translation serves as possibilities for iterations of language and meaning to flourish in different ways, which is directly linked to the manifestation of a hybrid, complex cultural identity.

The conceptual aim for this work is the visual immediacy of the imagery against the unravelling of words in the texts. While in most cases texts and images function as self-contained realities, when image and text are placed in conjunction, they can become symbiotic: blending, crashing, evoking, and resisting each other, thus resulting in pieces that encourage a dialogue in the non-language I propose, and offer more fluid forms of subjective representations.