Holding Water, 2018
4K Digital Video with Audio
Spanish with English Subtitles
3:35 min
In Holding Water, people throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts imagine the origin of two anonymous blue fragments as they touch and handle them. From within a diner in the Bronx, a grocery store in New Haven, or a living room near Boston- to name a few places- strangers, friends, and family are asked, “where do you think these came from?”
The fragments were collected in Puerto Rico and are part of a personal collection of blue objects called Water Objects for Thinking. Churned up by weather or washed up by the sea, the various objects were found in the earth. They reflect some of the colors in the Caribbean Sea.
More on Water Objects for Thinking-
From a 2020 text titled Most of My Body I Cannot See:
“In every studio I have set up for myself in the last three years, I lay out my Water Objects. Sometimes on velvet, sometimes on the ground. I organize them by color or shape, I move them, I play. On my trips to Puerto Rico, I began collecting my Water Objects, things that remind me of the colors I see in the Caribbean sea. They are objects which were at one time buried in the earth, but later were churned up by weather or washed up by the sea. A tiny glass bottle for makeup foundation, a braid of acrylic rope, a Reggaeton Hits 2002 CD, shards of Jadeite, chunks of house. They live quietly in my studio, absorbing my skin cells and voice.”
Video link available, please email genesisbaez@gmail.com
