LAURA CAMILA MEDINA—
Artist Statement: Mi Reflejo

If I think back to my first ever memory, I recall a dream where spiders are crawling on my white baptism dress in the cradle that holds my body. When I think of this dream, symbolically, I think of the webs that nestled me, enveloped me, protected me, suffocated me. The power held in remembering, the neurological, emotional, physical act of memory, has allowed me to see those spiders without fear. The spider as creator, world builder, silk maker, weaver. 

The web on its own holds so much significance in this world I’m building. The web like brain synapses, connecting profound memories of my grandmother’s hands to the taste of arepas and sweet coffee with a lot of milk. The feeling of shame and embarrassment contained in a Pokemon lunchbox. It’s hard to believe but a cow stuffed animal holds my entire childhood in her little body. In the book in the corner room at my grandparent’s apartment there’s a page with a dove and a heart with windows, I want to live there when I grow up. Today, in a more conscious effort, the love we share fits within a soft, small heart with two faces, sewn together, “se fundan en una sola tu alma y la mía”. 

The web is also connection, what Nam June Paik coined as the “electronic superhighway”. The TV, my original black mirror, transported me to magical worlds and painful realities. Something inside of my body awakens whenever I hear the soft sizzle of a CRT TV powering on. Anastasia plays on TV and drowns out the war in the next room. I am alone, but somehow less so when Sakura Cardcaptor searches for something, someone she also longs for. Thanks to RCN and Caracol, I am aware of kidnappings, beauty pageant queens, car bombs, and US military training for Colombian soldiers. I don’t miss an episode of Betty la Fea. My dad is gone but he sends Britney Spears’ first album from the US and I try to teach myself English, making out the words in the song Sometimes as I prepare for the future ahead. I am 5 years old. 

I didn’t realize then that I traded those lovely kisses between the mountains and sky, the city that watched me learn how to talk and walk, for superhighways and gigantic billboards signaling that I was indeed at the happiest place on earth until I couldn’t go back. There is a hole in our family’s web, a shape that is cutout and transplanted somewhere far. I pray for my brother, my sisters, and my grandparents. TVs here are much flatter, silencing the soft sizzle, and making that world inside even larger. I stand in front of the TV trying to learn the dance moves I see on MTV Jams. I dream of being the girl in the video. Soon enough, I am analyzing my family structure, our web, in comparison with the Tanners in Full House. I sit there and wonder if I too will be loved unconditionally if I wear too much makeup on the first day of junior high. My dad sings Chiquitita on a cheerful morning, I think he made it up about me. I don’t realize the sinister aftertaste. I am 8 years old. 

The web grows with every year. My mom brings home an iMac G3 that was thrown out of the house she cleans. It’s my first computer, outdated by 5 years, and inside I find a burned CD, the first song is Crawling by Linkin Park. I spend my afternoons crafting the most perfect mixtape that transitions from me&U by Cassie to Pam Pam by Wisin y Yandel thanks to Limewire and this computer’s ability to survive any virus. I create my first Myspace profile and suddenly this virtual web connects me to millions of people around the world. My identity can be expressed through a song of choice, a copy paste survey, picking just the right layout from myspacelayouts.com, my top 8 friends, and a profile pic. Don’t forget to F4F. Nam June Paik is still alive. I tell the world I’m 16 years old when really I’ve just had my 5th grade graduation. 

My parents’ web can no longer contain me. The American dream has proven to come at the cost of working for a glove wearing mouse instead of spending sitcom style quality time together. I spend most of the time alone, living in my imagination. I become unrecognizable to my parents and exclude them through the walls of my bedroom, webs woven in a language foreign to them. I listen to Fiona Apple’s Tidal, drowning in a deep wave of my own tears. My parents don’t know and I’ve sworn to never let this secret go. I cover my room with cutouts from magazines, my first art installation. I write in my little blood diary, nonsensical trains of thought from my first acid trip. I am riding a rollercoaster with no end. I want to get off but I keep riding the ride. I dream of a web of my own, somewhere safe enough to be myself. I draw a portrait of a baby. I fall in love, I am 16 years old (actually).

I often think about the world building and introspection that happens in a teenage girl’s bedroom, how an identity is thoughtfully constructed and memories are archived and displayed. I don’t think we give them enough credit for their contributions to culture and knowledge creation and sadly the world often turns against them. Teenage girls are philosophers. No one can downplay that Shakira Isabel Mebarak established herself as my favorite poet when she was just 16 years old. I search for relatability in my ability to quote every line from Thirteen and The Virgin Suicides but Tracy and Lux would crumble in front of my Colombian parents. I was more like Evie Zamora anyways. In my heart, I will forever seek for the justice we never got.

The spider as architect builds a new world in the pre-existing one. Colombian people paint old Spanish architecture to reflect a vibrant national identity; not denying the history but dreaming of something new. In the migrant microcosm of my childhood, Colombians in Orlando, FL, replicate this style inside of restaurants, have you ever seen an internal balcony? I don’t know what’s beyond that wall except maybe adaptation. I wonder what being Colombian means, if anything, is it the travel size cultural formula of the miniature balconies that adorn the restaurant? I move across the country chasing Americanized dreams, convinced that I need space away from my familiar web, only to recreate soundtracks filled with Willie Colon, Celia Cruz, Hector Lavoe, Ruben Blades, Soda Stereo, and Fito Paez. We may have had 0 books in our apartment, but it was this music that radicalized me from a young age. I clean the house on Sunday mornings like my mother, my childhood plays on a bad speaker and I fear that I’ll never be good enough. I need connection. I think about this ability to create something new, the kind of resourcefulness my parents taught me, I imagine it will come in handy when the empire crumbles. 

I am once again separated, living in memories and reaching out to you through the photos inside of my Minnie Mouse suitcase. I am bad with phone calls, all I’ve ever known was long distance love. There are mountains around me but they don’t compare to you. Buscando paisajes conocidos, en lugares tan extraños, que no puedo dar contigo. I am obsessed with preservation. In my mind’s eye, I am weaving a new space just for me. All my memories live here, in the patterns of the walls, in the moving images outside the window. The rooms multiply, making a palace with no reference but my own. I wonder what I’ll find if I step outside. In sheets of paper, I create ponds of colored water where I can see myself. Mi Reflejo. I read about Louise Bourgeois’ childhood and I see one of her spiders in person for the first time; I nestle in her validation. I feel pride in my moving paintings and drawings, especially in their distinction from the linear, mass produced, hyper-realistic animations that surround us. An anti-disney aesthetic. The movement symbolizes change, migration, transformation, the butterflies and birds are my favorite, I want to share their freedom. I can’t turn away as I watch thousands of people with no choice but Stockholm syndrome trying to find refuge in the hands of those responsible for their pain. An endless trek. I am angry at the world. It feels impossible to travel through the web now, I know parts of it have been swept away, it’s been over 20 years. My heart falls through a dark void, I can’t make a web to catch it fast enough. I rip at the seams. There’s gotta be more to life. On my walks home Abba sings to me, Las estrellas brillan por ti allá en lo alto, I imagine the stars are my grandparents. I don’t believe in heaven, but I know that you are mine. 

With 8 little legs, I leave the room to find the mountains. They’re not the same ones, but I know that in mountains blue and green I’ll always dream of home, and this is it for now. This is home. I think of Ana Mendieta’s search of home and the impossible body-land reconnection that drives her to find home in the earth, perpetually. I find home inside, a deep landscape to explore. In open fields, my memories live all around me like monuments. They have crumbled through an incessant process of translation, nonetheless I, the ethnographer, excavate and polish dust to better understand. Un tema en technicolor para hacer algo util del amor. The softness of this world breaks the fall of reality. The flowers always bloom after heartbreak and the petals are never ending. With drawn wings, I fly away, looking through the webbed layers, all existing simultaneously, I no longer feel fragmented but I also don’t feel like a singular version of myself. Everything becomes small from up here, a miniature world that will become large once again. All the non-linear pathways, the labyrinthine corridors of my memory, they connect everyone I’ve ever been and will be, to the ancestral, the familial, the cultural, the self molded by and beyond consumerist agendas, the handmade, the digital, everything I love and everything that pains me. I can see now that they are not mutually exclusive and they are part of a much larger web, and through little paper windows I can see you and you can see me, finally.