Michelle Patiño-Flores' "Visions of Freedom" - Image of Research 2026

I collaborate with Black (and) queer Cuban artists to understand their practices of freedom in a contested political landscape. Protecting the anonymity of my interlocutors is an especially important part of my research, as public critique of the Revolutionary government is sometimes met with state violence. For my ethnographic fieldwork, I practice experimental film photography that obscures and preserves the identity of those represented. To structure my images, I draw from Black Studies theorist Christina Sharpe to apply her techniques of Black Annotation and Redaction. Through her conceptual and technical tools, I create images that protect my interlocutors from uninvited public consumption and state scrutiny and yet welcome the gazes of friends and kin who can readily identify the people and places in the images. The images are therefore intelligible only to the predetermined public of the subjects involved: they are relational... similar to how freedom is relational. It is achieved through communal efforts, for the benefit of communal life.