SURFACE - Compositions

For years, I could not sleep. I would get into bed, but I could not sleep. Even in the most intimate space, I felt something might happen outside. I would think, I don´t want the night to come. The moment you go to bed and close your eyes, you remember what happened that day. A solitary figure floats on a mattress in a body of water. She is alseep, or resting, white sheets in a great expanse of water; it is southern Mexico. Surface documents durational performances where I attempt to sleep while afloat in desserted seas, rivers and lakes. These compositions reveal to the viewer the place and the subject. Distance and time merged in one image named after the location. The two images evoque the isolation and solitude of the state of mind of the performer. When I create these images I am looking for sensations on my own surface while being exposed to the elements. The wind, the water, the sand, animals, I won’t look at them, I just feel. Cold, heat, pain, fear, warmth, pleasure merge through my skin. The more I get into this process my body and mind will take me to a meditative state. At this place there are no images in my head, just a profound dialog with my body and peace in my soul. I am there. I travelled from New York to the Yucatán Peninsula searching for a way to sleep, to rest in relationship to my ancestors. I draw from the legacies of magical realism but I use the technology of aerial drone imaging to see myself from above. I place myself, unclothed, outside, afloat, to reconnect my body to the environment that surrounds me. I am no longer from Mexico or from the United States; I am at home in myself. In a time of political turmoil and contested citizenship, my work speaks to the possibility of finding home.