Beyond the border stems from the urge to translate the theoretical reflections developed in my thesis into visual and material form, exploring the concept of non-place, diasporic identity and colonial memory through sculpture and installation.
Working with body, material and sound, I sought to create works that are not mere representations, but living archives of memory and resistance, capable of evoking stories and offering new possibilities of belonging.
The set of installations that make up the practical project is configured as a suspended space, an in-between place where fragments of objects without roots or time settle, reconstructing an unstable geography in search of a missing origin and identity. Each work is a piece of this fragmented archive, in which dislocation is translated into a corporeal and material narrative of diaspora.
The works that make up this non-place are four:
Sonido Primordial is a sound sculpture that evokes an ancestral sound, an echo of collective memories that cross time and geography.
The sculpture, made of welded and rusted metal, appears as a hybrid organism, a body broken and reassembled, an emptied placenta that still retains the potential of life.
The beating heart of the sculpture is a dynamic mechanism that is activated by the fall of the frejol castilla, a legume native to Africa, introduced to the Americas via the transatlantic trade routes.
Their journey in the sculpture begins on a small metal saucer, which gradually tilts under their weight, causing the beans to slide to the right.
From here, the beans continue along an inclined metal element that guides them in a new direction, leading them onto a second platform.
At this point, their path splits: the seeds can bounce off a metal plate, generating a vibrating sound that echoes like a deep, primordial beat, or they can fall into a container containing soil. In the latter case, the seeds find a fertile environment, potentially germinating and transforming the sculpture into a living, evolving work.
The sound arising from this process is not just a physical vibration, but an ancient call, an echo of transit, of the forced movement of diasporic bodies and their capacity for resistance.
Each bean that bounces off the metal plate marks the passage, the journey, while those that fall into the ground tell of the possibility of a new root, a reconnection with the earth after uprooting.
This installation is deeply connected to the research on racial identity and the dislocation of diasporic communities.
The metal, corroded by time, represents the migrant body, marked by passage, by fatigue, by the struggle to preserve one's identity in a context that often denies the possibility of belonging. The frejols castilla, with their potential for germination, symbolise cultural and artistic re-appropriation, the gesture of planting and growing something of one's own in new soil.
Sonido Primordial is therefore a work that does not merely represent, but acts in time, giving life to a sound and biological process. Its sound is the rhythm of those who have been uprooted, but continue to search for their space in the world, tracing new maps of belonging and existence.
Hijos del Mar is a video-performance that develops like a propitiatory rite, an intimate and symbolic dialogue between the body, the earth and the ocean. The work stems from the need to give voice to those who find themselves suspended between two worlds, without a place of belonging, it develops the theme of dislocation, this time through the body and the ritual gesture.
The performance takes place on a volcanic beach in the Canary Islands. With my bare hands, I dig among the black pebbles, creating a cavity that becomes a nest, a temporary dwelling, a stone cradle that can welcome and protect it. The action of digging and creating a temporary shelter represents the instability of diasporic identity, always in search of a place that can accommodate it. The gesture is essential, primitive, repetitive, as if in touching the earth it seeks to reconnect with a distant origin, with an identity dispersed among the waves.
Marking the beginning and end of the performance is the sound of the bucio, an ancient instrument of the Canary Island aborigines, once used to convey messages across the vastness of the ocean.
Ofrenda was born from the desire to rework and transmit an ancestral memory at risk of being lost to time and space, just like many stories from diasporic communities. The sculpture is inspired by ancient Inca rituals, specifically votive offerings immersed in the sacred waters of Lake Titicaca.
The piece echoes the original shape of Inca offerings: a stone parallelepiped with a hemispherical cavity where sacred objects were placed, small llama sculptures carved from shell, gold sheets, votive items, before being sealed and submerged.
In this contemporary version, the stone still hosts a micro-cast gold llama. However, it is no longer sealed but left open, revealing its content as a relic pulled from time.
The stone sculpture is submerged in a water-filled glass cube and suspended from the ceiling by chains. This water, once protective and concealing, now exposes the offering, holding it in a timeless, dislocated space, no longer tied to a precise geography, but rather becoming an archive of migrant memories.
Its deep call intertwines with the images, evoking an ancestral memory, a connection between the peoples of the diaspora and the sea as a witness to their interrupted trajectories.In the background, a poem accompanies the flow of images, an invocation addressed to the ocean to become homeland and refuge:
Escucha mi llamada,
mi profundo clamor es tuyo.
Océano, acéptame como tu hija
Recíbeme en tus orillas
Permite que tus aguas sagradas me bauticen y purifiquen
Y que tu seas mi patria
y que tus piedras sean mi casa
y que tu bramido sea para mi melodía antigua.
Me quedaré en el océano
En la profundidad de los abismos
Lejana de mi tierra madre
Extranjera en la tierra que me refugió
Océano, escucha mi súplica.
Suspended in space, the sculpture embodies transience and instability. Like diasporic communities, Ofrenda is no longer anchored to a single land: its existence is fluid, moving between past and present, origin and dispersion.
The glass cube becomes a narrow aquarium, too small, restricting the offering to a liminal space.
Lo que somos is a sculpture exploring racialized identity, displacement, and belonging through the materiality of the body.
The sculpture takes the form of a twisted, curled-up female figure whose volume defies the rigidity of matter, appearing fluid and constantly changing. The body is fragmented: three holes pierce through it, separating its organic forms with empty spaces.
Coated in a hard resin resembling bone or horn, the sculpture’s cracks reveal wood pulp, cotton, and threads — contrasting the impermeable outer shell with a fragile, fraying interior.
The three holes — in the head, navel, and between the legs — become symbolic portals. They reveal historic and cultural wounds imposed on Black bodies, but also represent spaces of memory and reappropriation.
- The first hole, in the head, holds a white element, representing the weight of white supremacy on Black identity and culture, and the internalized sense of inferiority shaped by colonial and racializing structures.
- The second hole, in the navel, contains shell fragments, a symbol of the severed connection between mother and land of origin in diasporic experiences. The shells suggest fragmented belonging, an identity suspended between memory and exile.
- The third hole, between the legs, also holds a white element, evoking historical control over the bodies of Afro-descendant and South American women, and referencing the violence, exploitation, and hypersexualization they endured in colonial and postcolonial contexts.
