In the arrangement of foods in the kitchen, the gold we drape ourselves with, the song lyrics that we bring into our bodies to celebrate and mourn, everyday altars in our lives show love and respect to our ancestors. For people living in diaspora, particularly the Puerto Rican diaspora, how do we connect to blood memories through objects and sensorial experiences when we are miles away from our ancestral homes?
People pass on the sacred memory of their ancestors and homelands through hearing, touch, taste and adornment. Smells, music, everyday sounds and textures from Puerto Rico awaken blood memories as medicine that exists in the objects.
Blood Memory ruptures the representation of altar (typically following religion or ritual), focusing instead on the intuitive while still creating spells that honor our ancestors and our homelands. Using a variety of media – collage, photography, everyday objects and audio – Candida creates five installations that connect to the spaciousness of memorialization.
In Caldero Familiar, a kitchen installation is accompanied by handmade collages and audio to reflect how we use food to connect with and honor our homelands on a daily basis. In the participatory installation Blood Memory, visitors are asked to interact with a variety of objects until they find one that invokes a memory from their body, write a love letter to it and place it on the corresponding altar. I Wear Gold to Talk to My Ancestors explores how we use our bodies and adornment to be in relationship with our ancestors and the things that were important to them. The participatory installation En Duelo recreates a more traditional bedroom altar to the dead but moves it into a communal space where visitors can contribute and find space to explore their grief over lost loved ones.
