“It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.” ― E. Gilbert

A series of photographs documenting the brief life of water hieroglyphics drawn on a rock.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”_Anaïs Nin

A series of photographs from the show TIMELINE. These works are about the intricate process of transitioning from childhood into early adulthood. The model is my daughter Natalie.

The issues behind my series Core are hurt, sacrifice, and survival. Both images are of a pig’s heart found at a meat market in Los Angeles, CA. Holding this beautiful organ in my hands triggered memories from the past. My Dad used to raise pigs to feed our family back when I was  growing up in Cuba. Killing a pig and using all of its parts for food was an important event filled with mixed emotions. We were thrilled to have something to eat, but at the same time it was heartbreaking to sacrifice an animal that we had come to love.

My Dad eventually stopped raising pigs. He wanted to give his children a better life so he tried to escape to the USA on a boat. But he got caught and was sent to prison for a few years. Those years behind bars were hard, but he saw them as the result of a sacrifice that he had been willing to make for his family. His story is the story of many Cubans, a large number of whom perished in their attempt to improve the lives of their loved ones. With the series Core I wanted to convey the darkness and paradoxical beauty associated with events where life, death, and sacrifice are involved.

This diptych was part of TIMELINE. Pigment print on canvas. The piece on the left has scratched imprints that I did on the surface with a sharp knife, the image represents the Cuban coat of arms. The piece on the right has cotton threads directly sewn on the canvas.

Weightless is about coping mechanisms. It is about the heaviness and lightness of life and about the malleability of the human mind.

The self-portraits from this series had been stored in my computer’s memory for years. I took them as a small act of self-awareness during a difficult period of my life. My son had been diagnosed with Autism at age 2 and I intuitively knew that early intervention would be crucial for him. During those years of intense therapy I stopped having a social life and got immersed in studying the human brain in order to understand that of my own son. With this series I wanted to revisit the past with the perspective that I now have from those challenging years of deep growth.