Neotropical migration is a project where material and conceptual research is focused on visual and intellectual strategies to draw parallels and differences between bird and human migration. Analyzing the natural phenomenon of bird migrations has allowed me to visualize my ideas and use the natural world as a referent in how to deal with empathy the contemporary migratory crisis taking place in the continent and in the whole world. The project takes form of collages that explore an interdisciplinary dialogue of aesthetic transformations, where I aim to generate elastic and hybrid narratives that lend themselves for fluid ways of sharing knowledge. Through my material practice, I weave and juxtapose diverse visual universes together so that they might emerge as new ecosystems expanding beyond their established meanings whether in biology, astronomy, anthropology, etc. My aim is to open a dialogue with histories of representation like painting history and natural history, to challenge their aesthetic structures and re-imagine them in a contemporary art context.

 

I take as a departing point the hummingbird. The hummingbird acts as a intercultural symbol because it’s a bird that can be found throughout the continent. Following their routes (which are the same routes shared by millions of other species) a new cartography emerges, and it’s outside of human logics. It allows us to visualize an expanded territory, an alternative territory that is beyond the geopolitical borders. Throughout history birds have been inspiration for ancestral mythologies and popular culture narratives that spread across the continent. For this reason I have decided to reference them as symbols that cross borders and celebrate different ways of knowing in the world.