Mother Archive is a feral response to growing up without images. After my father’s disappearance and murder when I was five, my mother discarded all our family photographs and never spoke of him again. What followed were decades of silence that slowly erased my memories. In their place, her lovelessness left me anxious, hungry for touch, and perpetually seeking answers. How does one create a family archive out of absence?

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In this project, I attempt to create a repository of images to help me understand my roots, mainly my turbulent relationship with my mother. I stage the bond that I wish existed between us in real life, performing the tenderness I longed for but never received. I search for clues in the beautiful yet violent island that birthed us both, and in a series of studio portraits from her youth. My own body becomes both subject and witness: a site of inheritance and resistance.

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In this work, the body, the landscape, and the archive converge—not to resolve the trauma, but to hold its complexity: a profound need to connect, coupled with the desire to break free from its legacy.