
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"Americana" uses flags and self-portraiture to highlight the sense of otherness and the development of a hybrid identity, emphasizing societal neglect of the immigrant experience. After becoming an American citizen, I traveled through the American South and the Dominican Republic with American and Dominican flags. The decaying landscapes and abandoned spaces became beautifully familiar to me, prompting a reactionary engagement that evolved into a private performance—a Happening within my practice. Photography captured my presence as both subject and object, in a personal and distant relationship with the flags and these spaces' unseen histories. This mirrors the immigrant experience of living invisibly, with the decay symbolizing the erasure of personal histories and the complexities of cultural adaptation and hybrid identity.