Lorena Molina

Can the way we display grief and pain be re-imagined?
Can beauty and bright colors be used for mourning?

In El Salvador, we make altars and offerings to the ones we love. The altars overflow with the brightest of colors and sweetest of fruits. Each color and flavor is a celebration of their life and a testimony of how much we miss them.

The textile history in El Salvador is complex and embedded with the genocides and persecution of indigenous people. It is also tied to the 12 year civil war, and the ways that globalization and capitalism affect communities and traditional practices.

How Blue, layers photographs of the land made in El Salvador with fabric that remind me of my childhood dresses sewn by my grandmother. The photographs aim to build, piece together, and create new sites for longing and remembering. These fabricated landscapes are my offerings. There are re-imagined sites where the pain and trauma is transformed to a space of remembrance of the bodies missing, the disappearance of this skill, and how’s that tied to my displacement of home.