Diaspora/Weaving Stories*

 

Diaspora/Weaving Stories emerges from uprooting—but also from the invisible thread that connects those who have shared a life. Three Venezuelan artists—Luis Gómez R., Lourdes Peñaranda, and Elsy Zavarce—former friends and colleagues in Maracaibo, interlace their memories and lived experiences after taking different paths beyond Venezuela, as part of a diaspora that shaped not only their lives but also their artistic practices.

This exhibition is closely connected to “Tejiendo historias” (Weaving Stories), a community workshop and conversation where the artists—reunited in Miami—join local participants in symbolic actions like mending, building nests, and stitching onto maps. The goal is to create a shared space for making and reflection, where personal stories of migration can be told, and where the experiences of rupture and rebuilding come together through collective expression.

Luis Gómez Rincón's (Maracaibo, 1964) work begins with a personal experience and expands into a broader reflection on migration and the emotional bonds that endure across distance. In Geometría de la diáspora... sobre las líneas del vínculo (Geometry of the Diaspora... along the lines of emotional ties), the scattering of his family across three continents becomes a suspended installation: a polygonal structure formed by the geographic coordinates of his relatives’ current homes, tilted according to each city’s altitude. The cords that support it act not only as physical anchors but as emotional ones—visible tensions reflecting the ongoing effort to preserve those bonds. All lines converge in Maracaibo, their shared point of origin, creating an “X” that symbolizes the intersection of identities, memories, and shared paths. This emotional cartography continues in Conexiones poligonales (Polygonal Connections), a series of digital collages where geometry becomes a metaphor for displacements and absences. Straddling the precision of data and the subjectivity of memory, his work offers a space to consider migration as continuous reconfiguration, emotional resilience, and the possibility of belonging through art.

Luis Gómez R. Geometry of Diaspora... along the lines of emotional ties, 2025. Installation

Luis Gómez R. Polygonal Connections: Cartography of Absence, 2025. Digital collage

Luis Gómez R. Polygonal Connections: Cartography of Absence, 2025. Digital collage

Lourdes Peñaranda (Maracaibo, 1964) reclaims national symbols to speak of loss, violence, and oppression. In her work, the tricolor thread frays—not just to evoke a broken country, but to point to the fragility of both individual and collective life, which seems to “hang by a thread.” In Horizonte tricolor (Tricolor Horizon) and Impenetrable, Peñaranda transforms minimalist language into poetic protest, where the material’s weakness contrasts with its symbolic weight to convey absence, the impossibility of return, and shared mourning. In her digital prints, she deconstructs the traditional symbolism of the Venezuelan flag. In some variations, the flag turns black and upside down—a gesture of rebellion and crisis, where the stars, once proud symbols of independence, become tears. Colors that once stood for wealth and liberation are altered to reflect the wounds left by violence and the plundering of national resources. Her series Solaires (Nidos-Nests)—a play on the words “sol” (sun) and “air”—shift the language of conflict into the language of shelter: the nest becomes a metaphor for refuge—but also for transition, gestation, and flight.

Lourdes Peñaranda. Impenetrable, 2025. Installation

Lourdes Peñaranda. Flags Series, 2025. Digital prints

Lourdes Peñaranda. Solaires (Nests), 2025. Digital print

Elsy Zavarce’s (Montreal, Canada, 1964) work is woven from affection, memory, and the search for belonging. In Arqueología lúdica (Playful Archaeology), small wooden ducks—found toys—evoke an idealized Venezuela of the 1970s. Following the 2014 protests, the artist used the wooden ducks as templates to cut their shapes out of a blue quilt, initiating an installation that later evolved into a collective practice: workshops where migrants mend fabric ducks, transforming a personal gesture into a shared expression of mourning. In Remiendos (Mendings), Zavarce overlays images of community actions, scenes from Montreal—her current home—, fabrics, and colors in a video-collage that conjures atmospheres of passage and memory. Finally, in Paisaje del desarraigo (Landscape of Uprooting), she presents a poetic logbook that documents her experience in Griffintown, a Montreal neighborhood undergoing urban transformation. The result is a book-object that gathers photographs, illustrations, and poems, shaped by her perspective as both an architect and a migrant. Moving between the intimate and the collective, her work constructs an emotional cartography where bonds persist despite separation.

Elsy Zavarce. Playful Archaeology, 2025. Installation

Elsy Zavarce. Mendings, 2025

Elsy Zavarce. Landscape of Uprooting, 2025. Digital prints

Diaspora/Weaving Stories is a tapestry of gestures, materials, and memories that crafts a shared narrative across distance. The artists intertwine their migratory experiences to shape a poetics of connection, mourning, and rebuilding. The exhibition becomes a space for holding one another in shared fragility, for celebrating the resilience of invisible ties, and for affirming that even in displacement, community can still be woven.

© Katherine Chacón

Photos: José Antonio Pereira @japphystudio

* The exhibition Diaspora/Weaving Stories was presented at Miami International Fine Arts in April 2025.