Ernesto Cabral de Luna

Juntos y Apartados

Archival Scans - Passport PhotosParents met in 187, Marries in 1994, Immigrated in 2005Unlike in Canada, identification photographs are widely required for any sort of bureaucratic procedure in Mexico. Because of this, my family has a multitude of these little 2"x2" photos of my parents from all stages of their life. This work considers not only the physical changes that my parents went through between each image, but also the changes in their identity as they moved between borders and cultures.

““A falta de pan, tortillas” is a Mexican refran meaning: adapt to a situation despite wishing for an alternative. For immigrants, this summarizes the mindset required to start a new life in a foreign environment. This body of work is a visual rendition of my family’s journey as immigrants by way of retrieving, appropriating, distorting and repurposing archived identification documents and family photographs. A visual and conceptual trespassing of history and memory, manipulating personal records and expired identification documents allows me to reject and ignore colonial classification systems and bureaucratic procedures. Exploring the relationship between identification and identity - within their new context, there are no complicated administrative procedures required for the existence or validation of these images. The absence, manipulation and erasure of information within this work echoes aspects of life that are (in)voluntarily left behind through the processes of immigration.I am grateful for the people these images represent, for the culture and memories that they preserved, however fragmented, and all the different types of dust these photographs collected.”