Vessels
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Intersections in Human Migration, Identity, and Allegory
Vessels chronicles individuals from Jackson Heights, New York, one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods on earth where over 160 languages are spoken, crafting a site-specific visual ethnography [non-exclusively] referencing, identity, diasporas, belonging, memory, and place.
This series emanated from my profound emotional reaction to the policy of child-family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border during the prior U.S. administration. Becoming a father in that era, the daily narratives and imagery of children wrenchingly separated from their parents or kin deeply moved me, stirring raw emotions.
As I began to aleatorily fragment and reassemble ephemeral trains in the sky in post-production, the series organically evolved into a stream-of-consciousness visual allegory echoing the delirium-induced journeys of immigrants who brave continents and oceans in death-defying odysseys in a utopian attempt to enter an unwelcoming West.
By capturing the Other in this emblematic American setting, I explore a vibrant human archaeology of place. This challenges, I believe, entrenched perceptions of or even the very essence of the idea of an Americanness. Notably, many individuals documented in Vessels are deeply anchored to this expansive continent, birthed on lands that stretch from Patagonia to Alaska, with ancestral lineages spanning 35,000 years.
In this endeavor, I've consciously veered from traditional photojournalistic paths, drawing from literary and art-cannon palettes to forge a [non-fictional] visual haiku and narrative anchored in disassembled truth.
Beyond the portraits, each composition intricately integrates fragments of still-life nuances: the surfaces and texture of trains, architectural whispers of the station, portraits of dismembered American flags, traces of urban life, graffiti, detritus, and the surrounding architecture. Bar the portraits, every image undergoes a unique aleatory disassembling in post-production, layered to coexist in shared spaces, transcending traditional collage. Each artwork melds over twenty photographic fragments. My reverence for the Latin American mural traditions of my formative years has inspired a unique post-production methodology, enabling me to produce prints that, even at sizes exceeding 90 inches, radiate with impeccable detail.
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PRINT INFO
Series Title: Vessels
Image Size: 90 x 72 in - 228.6 x 182.8 cm (or larger)
Medium: Disassembled Photography
Media: Two Dye Sublimation Aluminum Print panels mended in Kintsugi
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
(AP is not available for sale)
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CONTACT
For inquiries about the Vessels series, you can reach me at:
Email: marco@ma9.co
Tel: +1 347-772-9370 (New York City)
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