Trapped Between
I was raised feeling trapped between two worlds: Puerto Rican and North American cultures. Puerto Rico, the oldest colony in the world, constantly struggles to define its own identity. As a result, I question my perceptions of reality. The conceptual approach of this photographic installation represents my perspective of reality, which is characterized by feeling trapped between.
By addressing the verisimilitude of photography and its relationship to reality, I reflect my own experience. For instance, the duality between an object (the rope in my installation) and its representation (such as a photograph) is analogous to the tension between two worlds. I combine real objects with their representations to reveal the relationship between reality and fiction. This raises the question of who or what is trapped: me, the rope in the photograph, the viewer, or all of us.
The rope symbolizes the tension between what is no longer and what is not yet, and the viewer’s interaction represents the search to define reality. I offer this work to expand a conversation about modes of perception and ask the viewer to question the appearance of truth. Nevertheless, ultimately, it is up to us to question our realities, how we construct them, and whether they are valid.
