A Yellow Sky

Flavia Vega

(2020)

 

In the four years that I’ve spent away from Puerto Rico I’ve never felt more detached from my home. Growing up on the island, everything was (and is) heavily influenced by American media, but it wasn’t until my freshman year when I realized just how much, and how my art had been affected by it. I decided to accept the challenge and work on my longstanding struggle to rediscover and reclaim my identity as a Caribbean Latina and what that meant to me as a person and in my work. 

A big part I decided to focus on was the subject of loss and mourning, as I am currently going through this process myself as both a daughter and a Puerto Rican. Of course, this concept goes hand-in-hand with resilience and perseverance. If the last 5 years full of hurricanes, mockery from high-standing government officials, protests and earthquakes haven’t been enough proof, the people of Puerto Rico have proven to have these imbedded in their DNA. 

I chose to pair this up with superheroes, not only because of my love of these types of characters, but I noticed a connection. Superheroes are born from their losses and tragedies. They take these situations that could and very often should break them and instead get stronger. It becomes their motivation to be better and help others not go through the same bad experiences they had.

All of this, plus my desire to address and redefine stereotypes based on “broken and found” family dynamics made for a nice mix, which finally resulted on this project. Based on a what is implied to be Puerto Rico, my story follows three young adults who have obtained powers from different phenomena from the island; hurricane and the standing effects of an abandoned military testing site. Alondra, Iliana and Quique ended up being a combination of the best aspects of my family, friends and memories from back home.