The Promised / Lo prometido

The series "The Promised" consists of an aesthetic and discursive exploration of the subjective aspirations of generations of Cubans (sugar workers) who, in a twist of fate, saw their future horizon shatter. I assume the role of translator between the vulnerable and subjective oral testimony and the material and enduring graphic image. This translation process does not seek documentary fidelity, but rather the concretization of the abstract, transforming the verbal description of a mental image—"a dreamed-of future"—into an ink drawing that acts as an archive of an alternate reality. The "Promised" series comprises three pieces that deconstruct and analyze the testimony from different media (sound, text, object), questioning the linearity of memory. The museographic decision to disperse the media in a non-linear and non-symmetrical manner on the wall rejects ordered narratives, official history, and logical progression. Memory, especially the memory of thwarted dreams. "The Promised One" is a reverse archaeology project. It doesn't excavate the past, but rather the future that could have been but wasn't. Each drawing is an archive of a potential reality, extracted from the mental stratum of testimony.