Untitled sculpture by Amalia Galdona Broche

Memory Altars

The sculptures materialize a psychological landscape of otherness and memory crisis. As a child of the Cuban Revolution during the Special Period, a time of extreme economic adversity, I have conflicted feelings about my idealized childhood in Cuba as opposed to the country’s current reality and uncertain future.

Through drawings, sculpture and time-based media, I explore the fluid nature of identity, faith, memory of identity, transculturation and immigration while also highlighting labor-intensive processes such as collecting, tearing, breaking, joining, weaving, knotting and assembling textiles and found materials.

By referencing Spanish, as well as West African belief systems, rituals and imagery, I navigate the complex and fluid nature of history and identity with these sculptures. I am interested in the concepts of nationhood and collective memory, and their impact on personal or individual perception.

By investigating the history and roots of a divided nation through a visual language, my works seek to understand the impact of identity politics, migration and time, as well as collective and personal memory in order to mitigate my own perceived powerless part as a cultural “other.”

In the artist’s words:

Amalia Galdona Broche is a multi-disciplinary artist working in fibers, sculpture, and time-based media. Originally from Santa Clara, Cuba, Galdona Broche studied Sculpture and Art History at Jacksonville University, has participated in residencies at the New York Academy of Fine Arts, the Studios at MASS MoCA and is currently living in Lexington, Kentucky, where she is pursuing an MFA in Visual Studies at the University of Kentucky.