The trace goes into the land, which will never again be a territory. The trace is an opaque way of experiencing the branch and the wind: of being oneself, derived from the other.

— Édouard Glissant

In The Trace, Serana Angelista reimagines archives as living landscapes. By merging her mother’s documentary photographs from the 1980s with her own contemporary images, Angelista explores her personal relationship to her ancestral land, Curaçao. These assemblages present personal archives as fluid entities constantly reshaped by time, holding stories eclipsed by hegemonic structures rooted in a colonial past. Pushed to the margins, allowing them to survive only within personal narratives, Angelista wonders how personal archives and image-making can act as a ritual of remembrance and what value environmental photographs hold in recollecting and reconnecting with her ancestral home.

Installation pictures by Anne Lakeman

The Trace, 42 x 59,4 cm
Image solvent transfer on paper
2024

Installation view: UNFAIR, Amsterdam