Where You Are No Longer Anything + Back to the Blue
by
Inauditas: Tracing the Sound of Migrant Memories in Venezuelan Women Photographers is an exhibition on migrant photography and photography of migration, focusing specifically on Venezuelan migration from 2016 to 2022. Each artist featured in this exhibition challenges the notion of photography that reduces it to the “visual,” while disorganizing a traditional notion of the “audible” that takes away its “auratic” effects, thus reinforcing the experience of photography as one of listening.
Where You Are No Longer Anything + Back to the Blue includes both English and Spanish text translations.
Where You Are No Longer Anything (Work in Progress)
Schizophrenic identity, errant bodies that smell of rootlessness.
We come from the country of sorrow.
We are trees with the branches cut off.
The city forces us to work and in the meantime we sigh.
Drifting aimlessly like trembling animals, trying to seize the world we have infiltrated for the first time, that still remains unknown.
Unstable and fragile, we give ourselves to, I, myself,
to uncertainty, to loneliness, to desire, to sadness, to recollection, to forgetfulness, to the open night,
to nothingness.
Back to the Blue (Work in Progress)
By forcibly migrating, we become wandering bodies that smell of uprooting.
You don’t know when you will return but the return is a pulse, an idea that pierces you and goes through you like a needle. An idea that settles and invades everything.
Migrating and returning constitute a mirror; a cycle in which everything or nothing changes. No one prepares us for the return, that complex reverse migration; a reflection full of dark blinks.
To return is to trace the route towards the blue. That inside where we decided to stay.
To return is to trace the route inward and to realize the longing for hugs. For now we
decided to stay. We decided/I decided to go back to the blue.
– Freisy González Portales
Curatorial Commentary
Where You Are No Longer Anything + Back to the Blue intersect the exploration of identity, mourning, and uprooting, which Freisy González Portales does from her experience as a migrant in Lima, Peru since 2017, with the reverse migratory experience upon returning to Venezuela in 2021.
As a visual diary, these images show how González Portales began to occupy new spaces. At the same time the photographs relate to some images from her family album that she could have taken with her on the trip, or that she was able to recover digitally. In this unfinished dialogue between the past and the present, the uncertainty of the future and delivery also opens up. Between the image, the writing and the embroidery, she wonders about the layers of her own identity and the affective ties that sustain it. Thus González Portales forges her own mirror from the dark night of migration, tracing other landscapes and making herself anew; she also finds her way back to the embrace, to the sea, to the blue.
Donde ya no eres nada (Proyecto en proceso) (Español)
Identidad esquizofrénica, cuerpos errantes que huelen a desarraigo.
Nosotros venimos del país de la pena.
Somos árboles de ramas cortadas.
La ciudad nos obliga a trabajar y mientras tanto suspiramos.
Deambular de animal temblorosos, tratando de asir el mundo
Inestable y frágil, nos entregamos, yo me entrego;
a la incertidumbre, a la soledad, al deseo, a la tristeza, al recuerdo, al olvido, a la noche abierta, a la nada.
Volver al azul (Proyecto en desarrollo)
Al migrar forzosamente nos convertimos en cuerpos errantes que huelen a desarraigo.
No sabes cuándo volverás pero el retorno es un pulsión, una idea que te perfora y atraviesa como una aguja. Una idea que se instala e invade todo.
Migrar y volver constituyen un espejo; un ciclo en el que todo o nada cambia. Nadie nos prepara para la vuelta, esa compleja migración inversa, un reflejo lleno de pestañeos oscuros.
Volver es trazar la ruta hacia el azul. Ese adentro donde decidimos quedarnos.
Volver es trazar la ruta hacia adentro y concretar el anhelo de los abrazos. Por ahora decidimos quedarnos, decidimos/decidí volver al azul.
– Freisy González Portales
Comentario de las Curadora
Donde ya no eres nada + Volver al azul interseccionan la exploración del duelo identitario y del desarraigo que lleva a cabo Freisy González Portales desde su experiencia como migrante en Lima, Perú desde 2017, hasta la experiencia migratoria inversa al regresar a Venezuela en 2021.
A modo de diario visual, estas imágenes muestran cómo González Portales empezó a ocupar los nuevos espacios. Las fotografías, a la vez, se relacionan con algunas imágenes del álbum familiar que pudo llevar consigo en el viaje, o que pudo recuperar digitalmente. En este diálogo inacabado entre el pasado y el presente, se abre también la incertidumbre del futuro y la entrega, la experiencia del presente como tiempo en el que se regresa, pero a la vez, como la experiencia de no poder llegar del todo. Entre la imagen, la escritura y el bordado, se pregunta sobre las capas de su propia identidad y los lazos afectivos que la sostienen. Así González Portales forja su propio espejo desde la noche oscura de la migración, trazando otros paisajes y haciéndose de nuevo; también encontrando el camino de regreso al abrazo, al mar, al azul.
This photo essay is part of the Inauditas: Tracing the Sound of Migrant Memories in Venezuelan Women Photographers series, funded by a UCHRI Engaging Humanities grant.
