Nine years ago I left Cuba, seeking a new homeland I did not yet know, Argentina. I had an upbringing that had nothing to do with the world I would find at the other side of the sea. I did not leave Cuba for a promised land. I already was an adult to know better, that this does not exist, however I did long for a world that would have certain moral and ethical guide lines that were important for me.

I discovered a most beautiful city, alienated, and with certain social values that were somehow perverse, a city made up of immigrants who dream of emigrating. People who declared themselves without culture, when in fact it has one of the most unique ones I have encountered, to which one can add a strange chauvinistic love hate relationship towards their own nationality. It is a daily occurrence that communications are all with double meaning. Politics is one of the most perverse of careers, friendship is a game of conveniences. I found a city that lives in the realm of make believe. A long term dictatorship had left an indelible mark.

Thus Buenos Aires became for me a valley of nothingness, were values had been turned on their head, where I discovered that to survive I had to blend into the woodwork and make myself into a simulation within a simulation. My present work responds to that, they are taken from different moments during these last years in Buenos Aires, the backgrounds are all from my period in Cuba in the year of 1984

 

Sebatián Elizondo can be reached at:frida@intercative.com.ar