Faculty of Art

Photography

Ernesto Cabral de Luna

La Esperada (The Waiting)

A family sits on a bench as they wait for the palenque (cock fight) to begin. The image is split chromatically by the blue sky and green fields in the backdrop and the red/yellow light leak that cuts across the family's legs in the foreground. The light leak conceals the presence of the rooster standing inside the cage.

“Focusing on exile and the ephemeral nature of memory, the series interrogates repercussions of colonization: primarily the constraints on movement across borders. Central to this exploration is the examination of personal archives' ability to shape and preserve an immigrant's individual and cultural identity beyond their native home. The series encompasses archival and documentary image transfers onto various scrap materials: corroded and corrugated metal, as well as fragmented glass pieces.Utilizing corrugated metal as a recognizable material from the "global south," I examine the political implications of migration, repurposing and embedding it with significance through the preservation of memories. This material, synonymous with colonization, impermanence, and poverty, is globally employed in constructing lower-income homes, temporary shelters and walls that constrain movement across borders. Similarly, the glass transfers are derived from "third- world" quotidian life: broken bottles perched atop walls and utilized for security - an aestheticized ad hoc measure akin to barbed wire.Transferring images onto these scrap materials amalgamates elements of nostalgia, decay, and preservation, while underscoring the need for adaptation – inviting viewers to contemplate their past, present, and potential futures as it pertains to migration. On which side of the wall will we find ourselves next, and what memories will we bring with us?Appropriating memories becomes a poignant commentary on immigration and self-reinvention, challenging the notion of ownership over memories that are not our own. In doing so, an alternative reality is constructed, aligning with Alberto Manguel's concept of the artist in exile— whose faithful memory betrays their country's current reality; "the exile sees the country as it never is... everything he does is colored by something half-remembered... it is a country drawn from memory, from things half-known or half-dreamt."”