Where the Light Bends

In the Shadows of Loss: A Love Letter to Wounds That Heal

Where the Light Bends is a visual diary born from rupture—emerging out of rejection, grief, and displacement. This work does not seek resolution, nor redemption through the gaze of the viewer. It is, instead, a continuous investigation into survival, memory, and the politics of visibility.

Set in the Afro-Caribbean town of Cahuita, Costa Rica, the project traces the intimate landscapes of Black life—where the sea and jungle are not background, but living archives; where calypso is not nostalgia, but a sonic form of resistance. The people of this community have long resisted erasure through music, ritual, oral storytelling, and quiet acts of everyday beauty.

Each portrait in this work resists spectacle. These are not subjects. They are participants, co-authors, witnesses. The camera becomes a site of ritual—a negotiation between the seen and unseen, self and mirror, loss and light. The project takes its time. It lives in the in-between: between trauma and transformation, invisibility and reverence, fragility and defiance.

At its core, Where the Light Bends examines how histories of colonialism, racial exile, and personal grief live in the body—and how those bodies continue to move, adapt, and reimagine home. It is a reflection on Blackness, queerness, and belonging that refuses to simplify or resolve. This work honors the complexity of the healing process, where darkness is not something to escape, but something to sit beside, and learn from.

As the project continues to evolve, it functions as both archive and offering:

A meditation in image and text.

A love letter to the resilient.

A refusal to disappear.

A study of how we bend—and the light that finds us when we do.

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This multimedia installation weaves together framed digital and analog black-and-white barita fiber prints captured with a Leica, Fuji FP-100 Polaroid scans from a Wista 4×5 camera, and a video installation recorded with an iPhone 12/13 Pro Max. The work reflects the intersection of personal and collective trauma, capturing moments from my life in Berlin, including recordings of a racist attack, while drawing connections to the natural landscapes of Costa Rica. Bridging these two worlds, the installation explores identity, resilience, and the complex narratives that arise from displacement and belonging.

Saturday 26th of October ’24
Cahuita, Limon,Costa Rica

 


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