The Weight of a Nation is a piece that came to fruition during a particular time when I found myself in a shared, but empty and open studio with clean wooden floors and lots of light. The work was produced in part, as the photographs have yet to be printed in the format desired. The piece never found an exhibition space. This is an installation made out of three elements presented simultaneously.
The first element is a series of photographs that I took of myself with my trusted 35 mm Pentax camera and a long shutter release. In the pictures, I am dressed with a long black dress and black suede shoes. The images are ‘performatic’ and show me interacting with a map of Argentina made out of lead.
The second element is the actual map of about one inch in thickness and four feet in length: soft lead and pliable (and probably toxic, in retrospect).
The third element is a video of me carrying the map on my back and walking back and forth in front of a white wall.
The actual installation presents on one hand the life size prints pinned on the walls of the space. In the center of the space is the lead map placed on the floor, and lastly on the wall opposite to the entrance of the space, the audience sees the video projected on a loop.
As an immigrant to this country from the age of eighteen onwards I felt then, and maybe now too, the ‘weight’ of my country of origin in a literal way. The photographs show a love affair relationship that is simultaneously painful, funny, sexy and heavy to carry. And carrying it I do as an immigrant, the country of my birth is always present in a visceral way. The work is about memory, emigration and longing.