Video study

Background film footage, inverted to be viewed as a negative, was captured during my first visit to my motherland of Cuba in 2015. I’m floating on my back in the same ocean that my mother knew all her young life, before fleeing Cuba for the US in the 1970s.

Featured photos are a passport photo of me at 2 years old, a class photo at 6 years old, an ID photo for my tram pass at 11 years old, and finally a school photo for my junior high school ID at 13 years old.

As the alphabet is being recited in Spanish, interwoven with various field recordings I made while exploring Cuba, it is difficult not to recall when 6 year old Gina (second photo featured, red shirt and checkered suspenders) was sent to the Principal’s office for speaking Spanish at a class assembly at my English-speaking school. That day I received the message loud and clear that speaking Spanish in school came with repercussions that could effect my future, which in turn began a decades long journey of assimilation and the binding and sterilization of my multi-racial/multi-cultural identity. Today, I speak with the same fluency as the 6 year old I once was, still stunted and stripped of my mother tongue at almost 40 years old.

This is an ongoing dialogue I have been having as I reach towards a new decade. My wish of becoming a mother is as fresh as the questions I am unearthing and answering since my mother’s passing in 2017.