Birthmark

Puerto Rico is a demographically split nation in which the majority of its population live outside the island. When my maternal family moved from Puerto Rico to Atlanta in the 1960s, they brought cultural mannerisms, language, and perspectives foreign to their new country. I observed reconstructions of Puerto Rican culture as a child and a cultural “foreignness” that contrasted with my white American paternal family. I trace Puerto Rican migration patterns along with my family’s own history to question how a land can inform identity from afar. I examine constructions of racial and cultural identity in Puerto Rico and the U.S. and explore the contradicting narratives they create. Through my practice I materialize these remnants of a remembered place using the visual language of woodcut printmaking as a metaphor for migration. Birthmark addresses the question: how can a place in which I have never lived so strongly inform my identity?