Growing up in a military family, I have repeated the process of disassembling, moving, reassembling and acclimating my home, community and sense of self across different countries, contexts and cultures. Due to both my Portuguese heritage and the experience of living in three lusophone countries, I feel a deep connection to saudade, a Portuguese word considered untranslatable. It denotes a nostalgic remembrance of certain people, places or things, absent or forever lost, accompanied by the yearning to see or possess them once more. I am fascinated by the ambiguity of simultaneous belonging and longing, separation and closeness that I have felt my entire life. The focus, time and resources I pour into my work all serve as tools for remembering, honoring and understanding my past and present. My work explores the emotional relationships we form with the spaces we inhabit and how they can be conduits for both a sense of grounding and transcendence.

The series “Homesick” examines the contrast between my transient, international childhood and current life in the suburbs. While reckoning with putting down roots for the first time, I also struggle with the isolation of caregiving and the challenges of concurrently maintaining a creative practice. As a way to both reinvest in my work and understand my connection to my surroundings, I began this series of self-portraits taken in my yard and around the exterior edges of my house. I explore the intersection of public and private domestic spaces, using my body as a cartographic tool for delineating and transgressing edges and boundaries. I physically connect with the landscape and objects, using gestures inspired by contemporary dance as a way to be in relationship with the environment. The images represent the range of emotions present as I wander through the space, from dark humor and absurdity to yearning and hopefulness. I choose to only show fragments of my body in each image to retain autonomy and control over what is hidden and what is revealed and to represent the discombobulated feeling common in caregivers today.

These images capture the dichotomy of my liminal moments of freedom outdoors while also remaining restricted to our property, moments I spent alone but also in plain sight of my children and neighbors, longing for connection but also for the security of separation.