MARÍA CONTRERAS | Saudades with Acento

How intense is your love being away from home for so long? Is this intensity mixed with pain, nostalgia, or is it just memories? Nothing ever feels like being at home again, a place that no longer exists. Loving from a distance; a feeling of longing that never ends, an incomplete sense of belonging … These are complex feelings that have no translation.

Thinking about this in a foreign language: this is longing with an accent.

This piece portrays the abstract limbo where my feelings dwell, which has a direct analogy with my physical migration from Colombia to Portugal. The limbo is not only geographic, it is also emotional and linguistic. Will my accent make my sense of belonging forever incomplete? Could it be that my sense of self only exists in Spanish and/or Colombia? Transmitting complex thoughts and emotions through language, makes me feel lost, even thinking about it in Spanish. Although it is an introspective process, the effort of connection continues. The limbo is portrayed by a cyanotype picture of my father meditating in the Colombian forest. When the photo was taken, my father was wearing city clothes; when I developed the photo, I was in Europe. Though we are far from home and do not belong, we strive to connect with the surroundings around us.