(Dis)Connections

I went to Mindelo in June, a season when all the emigrants from U.S.A, Netherlands, Portugal, France, Italy and many other countries come back during their holidays. The Cape Verdean diaspora was also around and made me feel at home for multiple reasons. This feeling made me interview three people from different households/families. I got to know three family albums and three houses in Mindelo. These three sharers of histories were women; it was not intensional but also meaningful. In between spontaneous conversations, I understood that Mindelo is an island with roots worldwide. I walked between kitchens and rooms, saw hands, and heard different narratives about memories and space. In the end, it was an aggregation where we all had these connections and disconnections through the family album, travelling tickets, stories abroad and stories of who came back or never left. Such poetry and photography as a medium can provide harmony in all these fragments. It resulted in this artwork with pieces of the space and memories, or just the area, by balancing the times and the present history.