''If I didn't think that the water
surrounds me like a cancer
I would have been able to sleep soundly
while the boys stripped off their clothes to swim...''
“La isla en peso”, Virgilio Piñera.
(From the series Los injertos sagrados)
Fabric made from garments
donated by 20 people before emigrating from the country.
Approximately 2 million Cubans have left the country in the last five years and
have become emigrants. Breakup is a recurrent phenomenon in Cuban households.
Young people prepare, once the wind is favorable, to take “the leap”, leaving
everything behind in search of a more prosperous future. A boat or a plane,
with a little “dream” in the suitcase and many empty spaces in the house. The
piece rescues some of those fragments, textile garments that remain in the
homeland and are part of the emotional memory of the migrant. The clothes were
donated by people before leaving, the artist recycles them and by weaving gives
them a new life, saving them from the dustbins of oblivion.
