Documentation for "Archives of Healing 2" (2019)
Mixed-Media: Single channel video projection onto palm leaves screen
Archive of Healing II, is a single-channel installation and sculpture. It consists of a documentary video of my mother and I projected over a wooden frame of dried palm tree branches. On one level, the pieces of fallen palm tree branches I collected locally speaks to the psychic disturbances of my mother’s displacement. In parallel, palm trees are not native to Los Angeles, and though “naturalized”, struggle to survive in the desert climate.
In the video projection my mother tells her story of migrating from El Salvador and the suffering that she endured in her family prior to and after her move. Different parts of our bodies are framed in close-up while she speaks. The texture of the dead leaves adds a three dimensionality to our projected flesh, yet also index the mourning of an irretrievable material past.
