Bogotá, D.C., Colombia
Sunday, March 1, 2020

My dear friend and colleague,

I listened to your words and decided to write what felt closer to our hearts. I've been working on the essay for the exhibition catalogue, revisiting our relationship, finding connections that allow me to feel as close as possible to the work. I would like to revisit some of these with you, in order to clarify some of my intuitions.

Do you remember the day we met? That day, while walking from the coffee shop near Montreal's Vieux Port to my studio, you mentioned two concepts that conjured a change in my epistemological locus: the personal self and the historical self. I recall feeling at first confused and amazed: being able to finally recognize this distinction and translate it to the realm of reason allowed me to cruise the complexity of inhabiting the world while fending and acknowledging my own place of difference. Somehow, the video you sent to me, the image of you wearing your gold *calzones* and pink netted shirt, standing on the line created by two wooden blocks, takes me back to that day, to that conversation. The narrative interpretation I am making on some of your anecdotes, juxtaposed with the image of your most recent work, revealed something to me: the tension between history and story, the image of your body as the entity that allows this back-and-forth between them.

That day, I believe, we created and shared an imaginary place from which to argue, question, discover and build our own sense of community: the *in-between*, *el entre.* It might seem anecdotal that his happened while we both were away from our birth places. Two *latinas* wearing winter jackets and boots, walking through white paths covered with snow, but it is everything. It was through that geographic dislocation – conceded to us by our own will and effort, our curiosity about image – that the perception of our place in the world changed.

Being able to explore the distance between one side of our bodies and the other – the stage of the personal and the stage of the historical – moved me to look for the possibilities in sculpting bonds beyond geography. This brought me to embrace the responsibility of questioning the way we understand and relate to ourselves through our sense of placement in order to find a way to redefine those precepts. That is why I insist on the text I am writing for you, on the vocabulary related to location or words that work as coordinates, because your body poetically suggests to me these inquiries on the nature of location, on the representation of ourselves in correspondence with the context, on the possibilities of building a relationship with the *idea* of the world – and ourselves – from the small spot we inhabit, about carrying the memory of our bodies while performing them. Aren't our bodies the main territory that is colonized, conquered, delineated, exploited, but also wandered and explored?

I find a link between your recent work and the video you streamed two years ago, *The Stain Are We Ourselves,* which I was able to experience from a distance. The research you've been pursuing through the photographic system and language is nourishing the soil with questions about how we consume and relate to images that are not entirely visible. In one part of the essay I am writing, I say "...a drawing on the floor, a video, a fictional photograph from before on your mother's shelves. You were, you are. *Puto,* *marica,* *goloso,* an image for the others, invisible. An image to yourself, a ghost." Thereto relevance of singularity emerges; where the codes seem all exposed and explained you catch them, rearrange them, erode them, you create an interrupted image, you create *un-tiempo-otro.* Where the discipline is concerned about the result, you create space for the process, for the vulnerability in the process streamed. Before, you used playfully the representation of the world as a balloon – *un globe terráqueo que es un globe de hello.* Now you place your own body in front of the camera to explore the ways you are consumed as an image by others and by yourself.

I've been thinking lately about your practice as a map that is not static, printed, immobile, but intriguing, and unusual every time. The intellectual labour you are developing about image and digital platforms gave me a clue: when google maps is malfunctioning and is not able to show the entire picture, the fragments that emerge, the errors, the failure on the system, create another time, a gap in our attention that requests confidence in the feeling of uncertainty, acceptance of the grey areas and respect for the coordinates that are settled. It comforts me to know we can explore and build this place together, even navigating the mysteries of distance, that is what I consider the main power of art practices.

Well my friend, I am very pleased to be able to talk about your process and work. I would appreciate to hear your feedback on these impressions so I can finish the essay, remember the deadline is next week on Monday.

Always yours,
Ale.

Written by Alejandra Bonilla Restrepo to accompany “Somatics of the Self as Citational Form” as part of the “one sentence too many, one word too few | UBC Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition.” 2020. Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Vancouver, Canada.