When we tell stories as we age and over generations, we lose and find new bits of information. We add things that sound right, but might not have happened at all. We misspeak and mishear and imagine the situation so vividly we see unsaid things that of course must’ve occurred as well. As I talk to my family and record our conversations many times in a single conversation with one person the facts change and become distorted over minutes. Its new incarnation is only the pieces I remember and keep with me until I retell them and it takes shape differently in the listener’s mind.

Fantasmas de Perú: mi familia y las personas anónimas/The Ghosts of Peru: my family and the unknown people, is my continuous attempt to understand and heal the past. This project explores the way in which we tell stories. The ways family histories are discovered and hidden. But I also deal with the stories themselves, how does one decide what gets told and how? For myself, I use phenomenology as the lens to understand how art is experienced, along with a modified latin american studies theory that leans towards decolonial theories. With these tools I tell some of my family’s history knowing that in different moments the narrative can become something completely new. I’ll share what I can in this moment.