Heritage

Heritage is a collection of images that offer a visual representation of my own personal history through an exploration of family archive photographs dating back to the 1930’s alongside more recent works. Originating from a small, rural village in Galicia, Spain; my parents migrated to the United Kingdom in 1970 in search of better opportunities away from the extreme poverty provoked by the brutal Spanish civil war and the subsequent dictatorship. In many ways, my life has been defined by their migration, and it has greatly influenced my artistic practice and personal sensibilities. This work offers an important meditation on my own identity and allows me to coexist with the sometimes faltering emotions of internal displacement felt as a second generation migrant.

I descend from a lineage of peasant farmers that worked small plots of land to survive; plots of land that still, decades later, yield crops that I believe carry within them a DNA that links me to the terrain.  As my own life unfolds and takes me, in turn, across the world, I too have formed my own bond with landscapes such as Sicily where my first daughter came to life. These images, that fixate my memories in that existence, are sacred. They offer glimpses in to the love and poetic connection I feel to the earth and the people I hold most dear to me. This is an ongoing body of work…