The migrant's Cabinet:
This is a work in process composed of several components:
There is a world map globe, whose sphere has been replaced by a transparent acrylic one. Inside it I have grown slime mold.
On a linen flag hanging from a flagpole embedded in the wall, approximately 2 meters high, I am sewing with golden thread words that I extract from testimonies that I am collecting from Cuban migrants, printed on papers. These testimonies answer questions such as: When, how and where did you emigrate? by what route, route or routes? Why did you emigrate? What were you looking for? What were you escaping from? What are you still looking for?
I attach the pieces of paper with the testimonies to the linen in a branched manner, as if tracing map routes or webs of the slime mold itself.
There will also be three hemispheres, similar to the larger globe, with maps delicately engraved or printed on this transparent material. Inside, I will plant the slime mold samples in the place where Cuba is drawn on the map, feeding those organisms in the zones where other places are drawn (places in the world where the Cuban diaspora settles), creating the slime mold to "migrate" inside these small maps, emulating the Cuban migratory routes.
Statement: The construction of this piece takes the testimonies, anecdotes and statements of Cuban migrants as guides to plant living organisms, and trace tissues, using the molds as a metaphorical image of migrant communities.
I intend to redraw the traces of displacements, ramifications and disintegrations configured by the Cuban migrant collectivity through expeditions detonated by necessity, hostilities and utopias, representing social, political, ethical and sentimental networks, interconnected in the same way microorganisms grow.
The migrant's Cabinet:
