I was raised with a mindset of being trapped between two worlds: the Puerto Rican and the North American cultures. Puerto Rico, the oldest colony in the world, constantly struggles to define its own identity. As a result, I question my own perceptions of reality. The conceptual approach of this photographic installation represents my perspective of reality, which is characterized by feeling trapped between.
By addressing the verisimilitude of photography and its relationship to reality, I reflect my own experience. The duality between an object (the rope in my installation, for instance) and its representation (such as a photograph) is analogous to the tension between two worlds. In order to reveal the relationship between reality and fiction, I join real objects with their representations. This raises the question of who or what is really trapped: me, the rope in the photograph, the viewer, or all of us.
The rope symbolizes the tension between what is no longer and what is not yet, and the viewer’s interaction represents the search to define reality. I offer this work to expand a conversation about modes of perception, and I ask the viewer to question the appearance of truth. Nevertheless, in the end, it is up to each of us to question our realities, how we construct them, and whether they are valid.
