I started this body of work in 2021 when the S.O.S Cuba protests first erupted in Havana. I had the desire to better understand the lived experiences of Cuban immigrants and how those journeys helped shape families across generations. What started as a broader inquiry quickly became deeply personal. I turned to my own family, whose history proved far more layered and complex than I had initially known.

As I gathered old family photographs from the 1950s onward, I began listening more closely to the stories shared by elders in my family; stories of separation and reunion, hardship and endurance, faith, grief, and love. The first painting in the series is of my grandfather, Papu. He visited my studio for lunch one afternoon, we shared a beer and talked for a while. This would end up being one of my fondest and most loved memories of my grandfather. I ended up taking his picture that day which later sparked my series: Estamos Aqui.

Through more of these conversations, I came to understand how profoundly these journeys affected not only individual lives, but the generations that followed. I’m grateful to be able to share these stories and I invite you to reflect on your own families; whether chosen, adopted, biological, or otherwise, and the histories that continue to live within them.