Paola: Mommy say something to the camera, 2021

3-channel sound, aquarium, water, acrylic, hair, water pump, film projection, screen, fome sitting, small screen. ​

“Throughout the time, I have started to think more deeply about issues such as migration and the reasons why I am away from my land and family. The connection and the understanding of my mom being the motor and the center of all of us have been important and have affected meaningfully our present. The relations among us have transformed but the cords are not weaker, just the opposite, they are more rooted and expanding. The Film & installation explores topics like family, migration, longing, motherhood. About film: Through archive material from the graduation of Paola’s mother, memories from when she and her family migrate to have a new life in “Margarita Island” in Venezuela and the birth of a new member in the family, Paola tries to reconstruct the past and find the reasons why she is away from her homeland and family. Paola: Mommy say something to the camera, mom! is an experimental documentary film, shot with Super 8 mm Canon 310XL Camera, 16 mm Paillard Bolex Camera and DV camera Sony.”

The exhibition was part of Kuvan Kevät exhibition on May 2021 at Project Room Helsinki, Finland. The work was reviewed by the National Finnish Newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, saying: “On family, longing – and hair behind a CONVERGENT, TRANSPARENT SURFACE, hair floats slowly in the water. In the video recording of the performance, this same hair is being transported along the streets in an aquarium set on a table with wheels. The hair curls from one part of Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa’s (b. 1992) installation to another and is also repeated in her film Paola: Mamita, dile algo a la Cámara, mami! / Paola: Mommy say something to the camera, mom! (2021). Guzmán Figueroa’s way of dealing with family, immigration, and longing is intimate and humane. Surprisingly much is crystallized in the small, festive moments of the film, in which a cheerful voice of a child invites relatives to congratulate their mother and they turn towards the child, the camera, and sometimes towards the mother, at whom they point their words” – Sanna Lipponen