here nor there
Where are you from?
This has never been an easy question for me to answer. Are you wanting to know what city I live in currently? Or where I was born? Or the place I grew up? The place where my ancestors are from? Where my skin, my hair, my language are from? The answer to that simple question: "Where are you from?" - can span a lifetime … or many.
As the daughter of Nicaraguan immigrants born and raised in the American South and now living in the Midwest, my path has not been exactly linear. Yet, while my individual story may be unique, the tale of human migration is not. Like a map, these stories of migration have twists and turns, dead ends and highways, valleys and peaks. Also like a map, they don't fold back up into a tidy package. Each of these portraits are painted on top of maps that form the collective identity of the person depicted. On the canvas, maps crinkle like clothing, and rivers and roads meander underneath the skin like veins. These portraits meld maps and memory, borders and bones, all while attempting to answer the ever-elusive question: Where are you from?
