Panama Narratives
2021
Single Channel Video/Installation, 8:44 min.
Panama Narratives an experimental media archeology video, explores the U.S. intervention in the Panama Canal Zone and the relationship between the Canal Zone residents, the Panamanian people, the Indigenous Guna people and my childhood experience living in the Canal Zone. I use graphic gestures drawn over my personal family archives and a Frederick Wiseman film, Canal Zone (1977) to interrogate the inaccurate utopian vision embedded in these historical depictions of the Panama Canal Zone. These poetic gestures, inspired by Molas, artisanal quilts made by the Guna people of Panama, trace a forgotten boundary built by the U.S. military to divide the occupied territory. Panama Narratives has been selected to be a part of the Arizona Underground Film Festival and the Arizona Biennial.