Oleñka Carrasco was confined during the Covid-19 pandemic in a house in Paris 7,000 km away from her family’s home in Venezuela when she learnt the news of her father’s passing. The grief that came next opened up a space of reflection that the artist has since translated into this tender and multilayered project.
From this great distance, Carrasco traced back a connection to her homeland across an assortment of childhood toys, photo albums, old maps, bureaucratic procedures and Whatsapp photographs. Images became a portal, both into her past and this new present she found herself confronted with.
In this interview for LensCulture, Valeria Posada-Villada speaks to the artist about what prompted the creation of this powerful work, finding a visual language to express memory and its slippages and the photobook and exhibition born of this experience.
Valeria Posada-Villada: Can you please tell us how your remote journey to Venezuela began?
Oleñka Carrasco: It all started in June 2020, when I received a call from my brother telling me my father had died. At the time, I was outside of Paris, the city I live in. When a relative dies, families usually gather to share anecdotes, memories, and photographs of the deceased to process the loss. I felt painfully disconnected from this process, confined more than 7,000 km away from Puerto Ordaz in a stranger’s house.
But I was determined to bridge the distance somehow. I started looking for sights and objects in this house that my childhood self could connect to. Then I decided to take photos of them with my analog camera. I made one photo per day—nine in total—in keeping with the catholic tradition of ‘novenario’, or ‘nine-day grieving process.’ My emotions took over, fixing their presence on top of the prints in the form of semicolons and short texts.
VPV: The first ‘section’ of your photobook reflects this sense of introspection, as if you were trying to capture the feeling of loss through these photographs that you have intervened in.
OC: Yes, this first section or episode attempts to convey the double feeling of loss: the loss of my father and of my homeland. My grieving process made me realize how little I had left of that physical sense of home. The idea of a ‘homeland’ had transformed into a mental state for me; one that was elusive, fragmented, solitary.
That is why I determined that the photographs in this first episode should not reveal what had been lost. I wanted viewers to connect with what I felt then, trying to make sense of my loss in a place and in a language that was not my own. That’s why I initially titled this project House in Loan for Mourning.
Only in the second episode, once I started to have regular contact with my family through WhatsApp conversations and videos, did I introduce the major issues and characters of the story.
VPV: What triggered you the most in these everyday encounters with your family?
OC: Mostly the small, simple things. In all those hours of video calls with my family, I was often absorbed in looking at the surroundings of my mom’s house, the garden and the orange hue of the earth that is so characteristic of the Orinoco Plains with which I have a deep connection. So much so that when my mother left Venezuela, she would bring a bit of earth with her, along with some old family photographs. This reminds me I am still a daughter of the Orinoco river.
However, there was one image that struck me the most: the banana and papaya plants located at the entrance and back of the house, which I had completely forgotten about. They had not been part of my memory and the idea of home I constructed at a distance. So I decided to manipulate them using a corrosive process. In the book, some of them are paired with the digital originals, while others stand alone.
VPV: Would you say this corrosive process is an indication of memory’s fragile nature?
OC: Yes, but it’s also about depicting memory’s twin cousin: forgetting. I wanted to create a process that would testify to the violent nature of forgetting, which is why it is destructive and degrades the image. Despite this process, it is not abrupt; it’s something that fades gradually.
If you were to run your fingers through these images I worked on in 2020, they would immediately fade away, ultimately revealing how easily what we treasure can vanish.
VPV: What really appeals to me about this episode of your photobook is that it presents a much more free approach to the image. The black and white analog shots start to coexist with corroded images, cellphone snapshots, letters, maps and family photos. Do you feel this collage refers to the pastiche of memory, where different times coexist simultaneously?
OC: I can say that absolutely plays a role, but more significantly, I believe this approach was connected to the moment I was living. This chapter was made some months after my father had passed away. In a way, my grieving process had already taken place. I was much more concerned with understanding memory and also trying to process my country’s painful reality through the images and audios I received.
I particularly recall the bureaucratic ordeal that our family had to go through to be able to bury my father. Nowadays, it is incredibly expensive to bury a loved one in Venezuela. Families can spend months collecting the $450 (more than 1,200,000 Bolívares) needed to pay for such a service. And what do you get back? A concrete hole in the ground which is part of a massive grid construction. Locals call them “hives.” And you can imagine that these hives do not even accommodate all the people that die due to poor health care access in the country.
Throughout this process, I also came to the painful realization that none of the places of my childhood still exist or belong to me. What I have left of my country are the albums and the red earth my mom brought with her in her suitcase, packed in a small Vick’s VapoRub jar. The humblest of my treasures, my Little Country [Petit Pays]. Unfortunately, this was also understood by my relatives in Venezuela, most of whom had fled the country and now live scattered in different places across the world.
VPV: I profoundly admire the courage with which you describe such a heartbreaking realization in your work. However, I am aware that the story does not conclude there. These episodes—which are part of the House on Loan for Mourning project—are merely a chapter in the main story known as Patria, the one that you will debut and introduce at Rencontres d’Arles.
OC: Indeed. When I won the Photo Folio Review Award in 2022, I began to consider how I could delve deeper and elaborate on some of the subjects covered in House on Loan. Around the same time, The Eyes Publishing became interested in my dummy, and we spent the last several months working together to build the photobook, which will be published in Spanish, English, and French. I truly appreciate the time and effort the team put into the project because they not only embarked on the ambitious goal of creating three different photobooks—one for each language—but their advice also helped me develop my exhibition concept further.
VPV: Can you tell us more about the subjects that Patria will expand on?
OC: That’s for you to discover in Arles! I can share that both the exhibition and the photobooks will engage even more actively with media such as video, audio and performance. In their own distinctive ways, each of these outlets will convey how my personal experience with loss relates to—and is inscribed—in the global history of exile.
Editor’s note: The exhibition Patria will open on the 3rd of July and will run through the 24th of September 2023 at Croisière at Rencontres d’Arles.
Patria
by Oleñka Carrasco
Publisher: The Eyes Publishing
ISBN: 979-10-92727-55-5