Untitled(Miami, 2019) (2021)

One channel, sound, subtitles, duration, loop.

Esto no tiene solución, porque no hay ningún problema.

Untitled (Miami, 2019) is an act of queer remembering. This transcribed piece of sound was mined from an interview excavating familial and oral history. As my maternal grandmother and I began contemplating death and how to honor the dead, I inquired about her brother Pipo, who was gay, migrated from Cuba to Canada in the 80’s, and suddenly died of unknown health complications. She then reveals that she has another queer sibling, her half-brother Pepe, living in Miami. Both are never spoken of in our family.

In Cuban culture, and in relation to dominate order in Latinx identity, the presence of silence and not speaking of things named as a “problem” has historically erased queer identity and memory. “What does it feel like to be a problem?,” is a provocative question posed by W. E. B. Du Bois that contemplates racial recognition, place, and belonging. It reminds me of the particular conditions contending queerness as a problem as I trace a through line between the culpa of Cubanidad and the culpa of being queer. 

This piece, a conversation shown as subtitles on a completely blank screen, emphasizes our proximity to the past without pretending that we can recuperate its multitudes. It evokes queer memory, as it functions in relation to belonging and knowing, not as an impasse but instead an opening. Considering the ways in which feeling like a problem is also a mode of belonging through recognition.