Syria and Haiti Holding Hearts (Realm I, 2019)

Syria and Haiti Holding Hearts (Realm I) documents my return to my grandparents’ village of Bmalké, Syria, in 2019 (the series also features some site-specific interventions in Haiti and the U.S.). The first iteration of this series consists of using fabrics and textiles from my native homelands of Syria and Haiti to create surrealist images of Haitians and Syrians in my community. Through these photographs, I use my environment and subjects in my community to understand and analyze my identity as a queer Haitian-Syrian. Through the lens of family history and memory; immigration; confronting an in-between, fluid sense of being; textile and fabric as a tie to cultural visual identity and my grandmother’s sewing practice; personal and family happenings in both Haiti and Syria; physical landscape of both countries; language and community, I am dissecting my hybrid identity, an identity that is in-between, ever-evolving, fluid, and what I call “floating.”I am not Haitian enough. I am not Syrian enough. With the help of the landscape, my family and my community, I extend this internal contemplation of my existence to people and spaces that have created this fluid identity I bear.