family herbarium – Israel García Lozano

HONORABLE MENTION IN CONCEPTUAL

Israel García Lozano

Title:

family herbarium

Description

This project is a way of looking back at childhood to reconstruct it from the present. Not as fiction, but as an encounter where reality emerges in the act of evoking it. Because what we interpret acquires the traits of truth, and in that gesture, experiences are transformed and acquire new meanings as if memory were a living substance that breathes within us.

Leaves were used as symbolic material to construct these images. With them, scenographies were built that dialogue with the space and trace an emotional geography between the inner and outer worlds. Each leaf represents a family member or members, making them presences that reflect shared gestures and bonds. In this way, they embody a personal history that speaks of the ties and the imprints that shape us.

Each leaf is presented as a fragment of memory, a skin that preserves part of what has been lived. When placed on the chair, they adopt human gestures, where they seem to rest, wait, or seek refuge and companionship.

The chair, for its part, acts as the narrative anchor. It represents home, the place of encounters and affection, but also, as the site that makes absences visible. Around it, the leaves evoke the presence of the actors in family dynamics.

In this project, the image functions as a space for reunion, where the intimate and the symbolic unite to resignify family memory. The leaves and the chair become the tools where absence takes shape and memory becomes presence. In reconstructing childhood, the gestures that remain emerge, and where each composition is a reconciliation with one’s own history, in an attempt to inhabit what was and what still lives.

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