Family Portrait
April 2019
Mixed media and digital, printed on Japanese rice paper, beeswax mounted on Baltic birch plywood panels
32 x 35” per portrait
Exhibited:
Celebrating Georgia Artists of Hispanic/Latinx Origin, Sep. 5, 2020 - Oct. 17, 2020, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia
Of Origins and Belonging, Drawn from Atlanta, June 1, 2019 - Sep. 29, 2019, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Artist Statement:
I created Family Portrait as a series of individual portraits of my family to highlight the complexity of mixed-status immigrant families. Most portraits I have created are large-scale murals and I wanted to find a way to convey monumentality even if it is in a museum setting. To this end, I drew lines that resembled a contour map of a mountain range to evoke grandeur. Monumentality and grandeur were essential because I wanted to convey the importance of each individual.
I also wanted the lines to mirror the unique ridges of an individual’s fingerprints. The lines within each portrait are unique to that individual and reflect the complexity of each person’s story. I made the line work as delicate and detailed as possible to reflect the vulnerability of each person. My family was sharing their likeness, their immigration status, and their personal stories – making themselves vulnerable in public.
Each portrait is fully embraced by text directly from the subject’s own words, similar to the way text was used in Monuments: We Carry the Dreams. When producing the text, I wanted to make sure I gave each family member the option to share their story in the most comfortable way – my little sister and my little brother shared their stories with me in writing, my mom’s interview was in Spanish, and I used a previous interview with my father (in Spanish) and my other brother. I chose to leave my parents’ words in Spanish. I was not going to translate their comments to make sure the viewer could understand—I didn’t want to lose the authenticity just to make the viewer feel more comfortable while engaging with my parents’ portraits.
Our immigration status determines which documents we are allowed to have, and those documents in turn determine our access to opportunities. In Family Portrait, these documents are ever-present in the background and a permanent fixture in the back of the subjects’ minds. A component of each person’s story is demonstrated by their documents, through phrases like “not valid for reentry to US,” “not evidence of U.S. Citizenship,” “limited-term” and “card expires”. I intentionally made the documents appear as ghost-like layers in order not to overtake the portraits and their stories—because these documents and their limitations do not define us as human beings.
The portraits are presented side by side with my parents on the outer edges, protecting their children. All the subjects of the portraits are looking directly at the viewer, with the exception of my mother – who chooses to focus on her family. Eye contact is an invitation to engage and the text initiates a silent dialogue with the viewer, transcending the subject beyond the wooden panels. Gazing into someone’s eyes, whether they are physically in front of you or whether it's just their image, can be an intimate and compelling experience. I hoped the viewer walked away feeling that they had just experienced an authentic and enlightening moment - one that they would carry out into the world.
I created individual portraits to reflect the reality that we can still be separated and that family togetherness is a fragile state. Though there are limits to what I can do to keep us from being separated, Family Portrait will always be exhibited as series of six portraits, shoulder to shoulder - because families belong together.