Terrazas Triptych (Video Installation)
Terrazas Triptych consists of three interconnected short videos that examine the city landscape from the perspective of rooftops, lookouts and terraces in Medellín, Colombia and Tijuana, México. With the triptych I explore the iconicity of the city of Tijuana, as a conglomerate of memory traces of my childhood in Medellín, Colombia. Not concerned with romanticizing migration, or with Medellín’s and Tijuana’s sordid histories, Terrazas superimposes memory and chance, theatricality and documentary in a personal representation of the journey of becoming. The work combines text, sound and image in the recurrence of time that the medium of video exhibits to provoke a critical dialogue about the nature of migration.
CANDIDE (Mexico. USA. 10 min. 2009) is an experimental narrative video about lesbian love and emigrant longing, performed on a rooftop in Tijuana.
SOMETIMES WALKING. SOMETIMES SITTING. ALWAYS CARRYING OUR OWN CHAIRS (Mexico. USA. 15 min. 2007), based on Eugene Ionesco’s play, The Chairs, and shot on a terrace top in Tijuana, is a political critique of emigrant nostalgia. Using the chatter common in the tradition of the theater of the absurd, two improbable flaneurs make a trampled walk across Tijuana.
MEDELLIN, HOW CAN I TURN YOU INTO AN OBJECT (10min. 2009), is a lyrical documentary/symphony of a city/love poem and farewell to Medellín and Tijuana. This final video of the triptych blends the contrasting landscapes of the two cities into an impressionistic rendition. It is the failed attempt of making the city into an elusive love and, equally elusive, art object. By characterizing Medellín and Tijuana as lovers, I was able to deal with the psychological aspects of separation and the liberating possibilities of new understandings of citizenship and belonging.
