Casa en el aire (on longing)
2019
Melina Vera-Jaramillo, Casa en el aire (on longing), 2019.
Handwoven textile, embroidery, digital photography on canvas.
40x 40 inches.
Photos by: Adebowale Enitan
Handwoven textile, embroidery, digital photography on canvas.
40x 40 inches.
Photos by: Adebowale Enitan
This woven textile piece is composed of two interlaced photographic images of flowers. One is a pink rose in Medellín, Colombia, and the other is a red rose in Montréal, Canada. These two locations represent the geographic and emotional poles of my life: the place I grew up and the place I now call home. The photographs are printed on canvas and woven together to create a surface where memories and realities blur, much like the experience of migration and displacement.
Two embroideries accent the woven surface. In the upper left corner, the phrase: “And in the faces of strangers, I long for a familiar one” is stitched in delicate thread. This line comes from a poem I wrote upon realizing it had been ten years since I moved to Canada. It emerged from a moment of intense emotional clarity, the kind that quietly aches. I found myself overwhelmed by a nostalgia that wasn’t necessarily about a specific place, but rather about a version of myself I felt I could no longer return to. The feeling was not about being alone, but about mourning a past identity, and the painful contradiction of being deeply grateful for where I am, while aching for what has been left behind.
In the bottom right corner, a small embroidered silhouette of my family embracing is taken from a photograph from around 1999, in Medellín. This motif serves as a symbolic anchor, grounding the piece in both memory and longing. It contrasts the faded sharpness of digital images with the softness of hand-stitching, much like the contrast between remembered intimacy and present solitude.
Through this work, I explore the layered, often contradictory emotions of displacement, belonging, grief and identity over time. The woven structure becomes a metaphor for how these different emotional threads: gratitude, nostalgia, distance, and love all interlace to form a complex, evolving self.
Two embroideries accent the woven surface. In the upper left corner, the phrase: “And in the faces of strangers, I long for a familiar one” is stitched in delicate thread. This line comes from a poem I wrote upon realizing it had been ten years since I moved to Canada. It emerged from a moment of intense emotional clarity, the kind that quietly aches. I found myself overwhelmed by a nostalgia that wasn’t necessarily about a specific place, but rather about a version of myself I felt I could no longer return to. The feeling was not about being alone, but about mourning a past identity, and the painful contradiction of being deeply grateful for where I am, while aching for what has been left behind.
In the bottom right corner, a small embroidered silhouette of my family embracing is taken from a photograph from around 1999, in Medellín. This motif serves as a symbolic anchor, grounding the piece in both memory and longing. It contrasts the faded sharpness of digital images with the softness of hand-stitching, much like the contrast between remembered intimacy and present solitude.
Through this work, I explore the layered, often contradictory emotions of displacement, belonging, grief and identity over time. The woven structure becomes a metaphor for how these different emotional threads: gratitude, nostalgia, distance, and love all interlace to form a complex, evolving self.