Umbral
December 5 – 29, 2019
In Spanish, Umbral means gateway, a portal, the first step towards something. As I witness my son’s childhood, I often see him in that in-between space, drifting in and out of reality and the places I have imagined for him. Becoming a single mother at a young age proved frightening to me, and not for the obvious reasons. I felt a huge responsibility to create a nurturing childhood for him, different from the dysfunctional one I had lived. With these images I wanted to intervene, to somehow create a magical space that could lessen his generational baggage. With this project I aim to explore both my fantasies of what childhood should be and the freedom my son needs to live his own reality.
The main driving force behind my work is investigating how family history intersects with self-identity. I explore these issues through documentary and vernacular photography, writing, and image-text publications. I am interested in using found photographs and archives as tools for reimagining family narratives and the aspects of the female experience that have been affected by the attitudes of a patriarchal society. I believe examining our family history and the way intimate relationships shape our identity is important. By exploring the deeply personal, I aim to shed light on the structures that continue to shape me.
Erika Morillo is a writer and photographer born and raised in the Dominican Republic and based in Jersey City. Her work focuses on family narratives, identity, and the possibilities of image-text publications. Her photographs have been published and exhibited nationally and internationally and her photobooks are in the collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art Library and The International Center of Photography Library. She holds an MA in sociology from The New School for Social Research and an MFA from Image Text Ithaca.