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.
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