America, a Journey as a Metaphor, 2025 - On going

I was born and raised on the island of Cuba, where I lived until 1995, when I emigrated to the United States. Like many of my generation—educated under the sociocultural and ideological frameworks imposed by a totalitarian communist regime—I grew up without a true understanding of what the concept of patria (homeland) meant. The omnipresent shadow of the so‑called “revolution” obscured any genuine sense of belonging I could have developed toward the country of my birth. For years, I experienced a profound disconnection from my Cuban identity and the very notion of homeland itself—until, through exile, I was finally able to reclaim the freedom to redefine it.

In 1995, I arrived in the United States, leaving behind dictatorship for the radical promise of self‑reinvention. For more than thirty years, I have called this country home, living through the defining chapters of my life—my 30s, 40s, and now my 50s. These decades have been anchored by the freedom to be, to express, and to reinvent. I love my adopted country deeply, yet as I navigate my 50s under the current Administration, I am struck by a profound sadness. I am witnessing the once “perfectly imperfect” beauty of this democracy become something increasingly unrecognizable.

“America, a Journey as a Metaphor” is an ongoing photographic meditation born from this tension. The series explores the widening gap between the America I discovered three decades ago and the urgent, often paradoxical realities of the present day. It comprises everyday scenes captured since 2025, juxtaposed with archival photographs that I have digitally intervened in. Both the straight photographs and the digital interventions work as visual denouncements—a way of interrogating how collective and personal histories are being reframed in today’s social and political climate.

Through these images, I aim to reveal the fragility of the present. The journey evoked in this work is not only geographical but also symbolic and psychological: roads, landscapes, and faces become metaphors for resilience, fragility, conflict, and hope. By oscillating between the immediate and the remembered, the series invites viewers to pause and reflect on the evolving contours of democracy and belonging.

This time, however, the journey feels different. I simply don’t want to lose what I call homeland once more. The United States is not defined by any single administration or political moment. As an artist—and as someone who has already lost one homeland—I feel compelled to resist through image‑making, to confront and care for this imperfect country, and to fight, through my work, for the freedom that made it home.