Despojada de su Herencia

In the late 2010’s, my family uncovered a lost home video of sorts: the 1992 deposition of Maria Alicia Maldonado (my great-grandfather's Honduran mistress) from the indictment of Conrado Zavala. The deposition interview and accompanying footage compiled by Maria's attorneys chronicle her partnership with my great-grandfather, his death, and the subsequent robbery of the family inheritance by the mobster Conrado.

My image, superimposed over the recovered VHS footage, figuratively navigates San Pedro Sula, exploring this lost family heritage, inheritance, and memory. These works explore inheritance more broadly, asking what we receive from our forefathers, as well as that which we forfeit. The series is constructed within six thematic scenes: memory, possession, the body, vocation, boundaries, and religion.

This stop motion film is composed from 79 unique pencil drawings, each of them drawn at 6 x 8 inches with graphite. The deposition was translated into English from Spanish, and transcribed in three alternating hand-drawn fonts. All of the backdrops are adapted from the found VHS footage of the deposition (often manipulated), except for scene 6., which was shot in my mother’s hometown of Sparta, Michigan on an 8mm Sony Handycam.