From the Inside

As a single mom, I question how to visualize abstractions and the self. What happens inside the homes, mirrors to what happens in society, and what happens in society, reproduces the relationships inside the homes. They say that paradise is under the feet of mothers, but nobody speaks about the constraints of motherhood. My country is going through drastic political changes after the revolution in 2011. And find myself unable to leave my house, to march in a demonstration. I hold my breath sitting in front of a TV, military planes above my ceiling, and tear gas fills home. The baby ties me down, her mouth is stuck to my breast most of the time. I try to express how I feel about this relationship to the other, who is often not here, but he is present because I talk about him, I am angry with him, and wonder about his absence. I try to chase my feelings, pursue the walls inside myself and outside. Pain makes me swallow the pebbles, pushing me to tolerate a painful relationship. At the end of the day, after work, I go back with crumbs of energy to spread widely. In front of the stove, I try to cook to break the isolation between us. The room is full of mosquitoes that are hard to fight. I resist everything diligently, most of the time I fail. The relationship breaks up. Daily I sweep its remains from the corners of my soul. In the attempt of fixing my experiences inside frames, I am submerged within the moment, saturated with all its details. I articulate the emotions, to let them go, so that I can continue to march forward and further with an enlightened understanding heart that also believes. “From the inside" paints the constraining if not a maddening space of single mothering during a revolution. Ironically, it is confining domestic space that engenders revolt both behind and in front of the camera producing a series of self-portraits that are at once liberated and liberating. The domestic space becomes the site of uprising, of resistance, and of a new found freedom that unleashes the potentials of an imaginary carnival and constructs powerful representations of self hood.