I Can’t Hear the Birds

I remember the last time I went to my family's house on the beach in Venezuela. Most of what I am today I dreamt walking on that beach. When I stepped inside __ years later, everything was dark. But I could recognize my old bed, some board games and the image of an Italian coast that I grew up seeing hanging on the wall, a link to my immigrant grandparents. They had come to Venezuela in the late ‘50s, like many other Europeans, pulled by the marketing of a land of opportunities that our blooming country had become.

I moved on through the dark, surrounded by a buzz and a cracking sound as I walked. So, I took out my phone, pointed it at the floor and saw dozens of dead bees all over. Others were flying around me. 

When I got to the last room, which belonged to my late grandmother, I saw some of the bees clustered over a blanket embroidered with flower designs as if trying to pollinate them. I took some quick pictures and got out as fast as I could. I slept outside on a hammock, left the following day, and haven’t returned since. That was 2019. 

Only recently did I understand why these bees continued to linger in my head. A friend, after seeing the photos, told me: "They too hold onto their fantasy."

It's the search I've carried out for years now, returning to a country that exists only in memories, often foreign and almost always imperfect. Memories that reconstruct a future that already existed and that neither I, nor many in my generation, got to witness.

More than 7 million Venezuelans have left my country. Parents, siblings, friends. Ourselves. I saw my country transform into another and my memories fade, as if I were looking at my childhood through a foggy window.

But I keep coming back. 

I often seek refuge in that inaccurate memory—my own and that of others. This is my attempt to search for the remains of the promise of a prosperous oil nation promised to us; to delve into the memories of a time that existed before the collapse, but also to question our relationship with fantasy. Now, we grieve for an idea of ​​a country, created collectively by previous generations, that crumbled before our eyes.

Memory is not faithful nor precise. And in this collection of voices, a flawed vision of the past creeps in as the only safe place from the ruin that has gradually blended into the landscape. But in this territory filled with black oily stains, light also creeps in, as always, and a joyful refuge from the barbarism. 

This book recognizes the crack, but also the life that finds its way in through it. 

This project was supported by Magnum Foundation, Carmignac Foundation and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination of Columbia University.