My Mother Speaks of Land as Memory
In My Mother Speaks of Land as Memory, Ariana Gomez explores grief, identity and the landscapes that shape us. Born from the loss of her father, the project moves between the arid terrain of Texas and her mother’s Puerto Rican heritage, constructing a shared mythology from fragments of memory and archive – and bringing three generations together in a space between what was, what remains, and what might have been.
Photography Ariana Gomez
My Mother Speaks of Land as Memory is a project born of loss – of land, of identity, and of the past and future selves held by my father, my mother, and myself. It is grounded in the present yet reaches into the past to reimagine the future through myth: that powerful, repeated, collective affirmation of truth we rely upon in moments of upheaval.
“My Mother Speaks of Land as Memory is a project born of loss – of land, of identity, and of the past and future selves held by my father, my mother, and myself.”
After my father’s death in 2011, I began personifying him within the Texas landscape, our shared home. I had never made images of him while he was alive, and so I began imagining what a portrait of him might look like after death. In searching for him in the arid Texas earth, I found my mother, a migrant from Puerto Rico, unmoored in this vast foreign desert. Through my father and me, she became embedded in his landscape, losing ties to her own history and grasping at the loose ends of her identity. I juxtapose her terrain with his – water and desert, life and death, myth and memory – weaving together the story of their past and the future that was taken. At the centre, I stand as artist, daughter, facilitator, and executor, constructing our shared familial identity through present-day imagery.
My mother, father, and I exist in three separate timelines, converging through memory, myth, and the desire to reconcile what was and what could have been. From the fragments of my archive, I build a new history in which we all exist together in a single time and place: a home at twilight, when grief and longing are most palpable, and the veil between life and death is thinnest, allowing us to reach out and grasp one another in reconciliation.
“My mother, father, and I exist in three separate timelines, converging through memory, myth, and the desire to reconcile what was and what could have been.”
About Alina
Ariana Gomez is a visual artist living in Austin, TX. Centring photography and installation, Gomez’s practice explores mythmaking in relation to place, reflecting on her parents’ relationship to land. Her interest lies within the intersections of photography, video, and sound, and how they work together to create an experiential memory-scape of place.
Exhibitions include her solo show at Flats Gallery in Houston, TX, inclusion in the group show Even Distance with Trespasser Books at Preacher Gallery in Austin, TX, the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, VT, and Clamp Art Gallery in New York City. Previously, her work has been shown at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City, sTudio 7 for the Rockaway Artists’ Alliance in Fort Tilden, NY, and with LensCulture at Photo London, London, UK. Recent awards include second place in the 2024 Lenscratch Student Awards, The Hopper Prize Grant and a 2024 University Residency Fellowship from Studios at MASS MoCA. Gomez’s works are represented in the permanent collection of the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, TX.
Her films have been shown at Co-Lab Projects and as a public arts project at the Seaholm Intake Facility in Austin, TX as well as the International Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival in New York City.
Editorial clients include The New York Times, NYT Opinion, Lux Magazine, Texas Observer, The Atlantic, Plus Magazine, and People Magazine. Her work has been included in publications such as The Guardian, PetaPixel, PhMuseum, Booooooom, Ain’t Bad, Atlanta Center for Photography, Lenscratch, and Glasstire.
Gomez holds a BFA from The Rochester Institute of Technology and an MFA from The University of Texas in Austin, and is a Diversify Photo Up Next, and ICOSA member.
To see more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram
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