During the transitional period of post-Pinochet dictatorship, my family moved permanently from New England to Viña del Mar, Chile. I was eleven. On my way to be outfitted for my first school uniform my eyes met the glares of armed police hanging out from the gaping black portholes of their armored tanks. The impact of this moment was indelible.

The cultural shift created a tumultuous fusion of alienation and bridled fear within me, reflective of the Chilean people’s state of unease. Disoriented, having to learn Spanish and navigate a new environment, I felt that I belonged to no particular culture. Vilem Flusser writes that if we find ourselves in a period of expulsion, to survive we must take the chaos around us and interpret it as data— a conversion synonymous with creation. As a result of this early upheaval, themes of displacement and belonging inform my work both conceptually and formally.

I recently traveled to Viña del Mar, Chile, for a month, to make new work involving the girls school I attended as an adolescent. In this new project, I revisit generalized memories of adolescence, translating the difference between lived experience and imagined experience. The work will embrace the problems associated with the objective communication of subjective memory.