Video Meditation - ‘No Spanish’

I put together a little video study for ongoing artwork I have been exploring this past year.

I shot the background film footage during my first visit to Cuba, my motherland, in 2015. I’m floating on my back in the same ocean that my mother knew all her life, before fleeing Cuba for the US in the 1970s.

Featured photos:
•passport photo of me at 2 years old
•class photo at 6 years old
•ID photo for my tram pass at 11 years old
•school photo for my junior highschool ID at 13 years old

As the alphabet is being recited in Spanish, interwoven with various field recordings I made during my trip to Cuba, it is difficult not to recall when 6 year old Gina (above in checkered suspenders, second photo) 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, which in turn began a decades long journey of assimilation (via shame), 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, especially 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.