Who We Are Is Contingent on What We Remember

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA): As an artist, you are interested in exploring the relationship between memory and identity. Tell us more about what you are working on and how your immigrant identity shapes your work, if at all? 

Lucia Warck-Meister (LW): For some years now, I have been working on women’s role in Latin America’s independence. Women who fought for freedom, the federalization of countries, and the rights of native people. But history has made them invisible. Only a few names remain. Bringing back these names is to name us all. Who we are greatly depends on how we remember and record the past to create collective narratives. Through memory, I explore ideas of identity, historical narrative, storytelling, and de-colonialism.

thank you Lucia and NYFA for giving me the words to describe what I have alway felt.