ADDRESSES 1978-PRESENT

Selected contribution to PATIO Magazine issue on Identities, 2025.

Addresses 1978-present visualizes the lived addresses location of a 46 year old person who has moved more than thirty times across the Americas and the Caribbean. In doing so, this work seeks to find defining principles in the locations of a given geographical identity. Are identities tied to location? Are identities geographical?

By collecting the addresses in text form, akin to a physical curriculum vitae (CV), and visualizing them using Google Maps tools, this work intends to neutralize the charged nature of moving, displacement, and the constant cycle of new beginnings and belonging, as well as lives left behind, lost and new memories, and their role in shaping someone’s identity.

In contrast to a work highlighting someone’s lived experiences and unique characteristics—a usual body of work, the distant aerial photographs and almost-automated houses views construct a frail notion of clarity, an aspirational diagramming of life. However, the set of generically formatted images leaves us wondering how much a singular place has a role in defining entangled identities and if there is value in the clarity or the messiness of defining someone’s identity to specific geographies anymore.