updated statement & samples – Roxana

IN MY SKIN

In 1988 I emigrated with my family from El Salvador to the United States – I was eight. We carried with us nothing but a small duffel bag each, the clothes on our backs, and our very own skin. Embedded on my skin I carried traces of the rivers I bathed in as a young child, the waves that had crashed against my back and had tried to pull me into the ocean when they drifted back in, the dirt and earth that I still carried under my fingernails. I also carried in my skin the inheritance from my grandmothers, memories of the land, its history of bloodshed, and the dreams of all the people I was leaving behind stuck in a civil war.

Arriving to the United States we were classified as “illegal aliens” and “immigrants”. I had landed in a country where I was not accepted. However, this was to be my home now so I had no choice but to adapt. I was twenty-one when I travelled back to my homeland and realized that the country I had left behind no longer existed as I remembered it. I did not fit in there and I felt like a foreigner in my own country. Which side was home then?

I have since discovered that Earth is my Mother and that my Skin is my Land, and that I Only Reside in my Skin. During the Wonder Women residency I worked on a new series of photographs in which I created a new found land composed of landscapes from my country superimposed onto parts of my body. I photographed myself against slides I had shot during my first visit back to El Salvador merging me once again with my homeland. With this project I re-discovered the memories embedded in my skin. I also re-appropriated my body as my land, one that I carry with me no matter which country I reside in.