In Linen, a site-specific piece specially

created for Outside 11, the photographic

image has been transferred onto fabric and

installed along an outdoors washing line.

Family members who live in different

countries seem to inhabit the individual

cloth items, and by clustering them

together a sense of reunion momentarily

happens, the disperse diaspora is once

more united.

​

Washing is normally something that is

experienced as intimate, kept out of the

sight of the others. The English

saying 'do not wash one's dirty linen in

public' reflects not only nuances of

how English people relate to one another

but also cultural do's and don'ts. Social

taboos such as this one form a complex and

puzzling set of unwritten rules that the

immigrant has to negotiate and understand if he is to adapt to the culture he is emigrating to. As an immigrant myself, I had to revise and change cultural habits that once seemed normal in the context of my Spanish latino culture. Linen is an attempt to bring intimacies to the foreground, to highlight the power of visual and sociological statements and to suggest that photography can also be interpreted as a voyeuristic medium that shows what others are not supposed to see. Linen is ultimately an homage to my culture of origin, which had, and always will have, linen flapping about in the sun, for everybody to see.