el vuelo del condor
Capstone Exhibition | Motion | Print
This case study follows the shared life of my parents, Luis and Lily. For the last 26 years, they have navigated a difficult yet prosperous life in America to give their children a better future. Now they embark on their most challenging decision yet, returning to where they once called home. My parents feel immense loss, gratitude, but most of all empowerment, deciding to leave on their own terms. By shedding light on their experience, I want to highlight their individual impact in the United States in the context of laws that have kept them undocumented for over two decades.
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Medium 1 - Digitally printed installation, 84 × 12” (2026)
A quantitative representation of Luis and Lily's 26 years in the United States. Using photographs as chronological checkpoints, the timeline presents statistical data on my parents’ direct contributions to the US, such as where they lived, the jobs they held, the taxes they filed, and personal life milestones.
Medium 2 - Thank You Video, Time-based video, 6:10 mins., 1920px x 1080px (2026)
A culmination of Luis and Lily's complete migration journey through a multimedia video, using found footage, music, and interview audio. Gratitude is the core message of the video, highlighting the emotional experience of a complete migration journey.
Exhibition Images and Takeaways
Process - Content Gathering
My first step was to repair an old SONY Handycam from 2005. Eventually, after much trial and error, I successfully converted analog MiniDV footage into digital video. I discovered long-lost footage of my family’s earliest years in the US, over 20 years old. This was the core content used in the Thank You Video.
The next step was to select images for my timeline. My family helped me pick the photographs that best identified each respective year. After several meetings, we pieced together Luis and Lily’s story year by year.
I treated the photographs by cropping out the people and layering on top digital illustrations that represent the environments and backgrounds. This combination of image and illustration defines the visual language of the accordion timeline.
The final result - a 7 ft long print! This was a pain to cut and fold, but so rewarding in the end.
