The power imbalance within photography mirrors a larger system of subtraction and editing. I am interested in the way one culture translates another, and how inevitably, a dominant culture sanitizes and reduces the other in a subtle, and not so subtle, continuation of vicious power dynamics.
I explore how representation is crucial to the way Latin Americans are perceived and relate to others, on a personal, economic, and political level. How does this, consequently, feed back into the way Latin Americans imagine themselves and project their futures? I question what revisiting the traditional narrative thread, as well as dealing more critically with representation, might mean for resistance.
My work sparks primarily from my experience as a Colombian woman, living in the United States for the past six years. I believe it is imperative to reclaim my own identity as a way to resist the threats of cultural assimilation, which feel very violent to me. In a broader sense, my work is oriented towards the celebration of an authentic and critical idea of who we are, that is independent of the economic and political agendas geared towards the promotion of foreign models and imported aesthetics.
In particular, my work considers how the Colombian history and national identity have been constructed against a backdrop of colonialism and patriarchy — defining contradictory notions of value, such as race, beauty, and class. It attends to the ways in which these notions are shaped and governed by images and language.