Magali Alanis
Rodriguez Beaudoin

The word solana designates a specific area that receives large amounts of sunlight. Often, it is used to reference a section of a house like a hallway or sunroom that is specifically designed to receive sunlight. Through a series of images and video, I am starting to weave a narrative about my relationship to the Mexican household. Last fall, my father told me that he was being forced to leave the house that had been under our care since 1992. “The owner sold it, he says, we have to leave by December 15th”. I spent the month of December packing the old house, unpacking our new home and spent hours commuting between San Cristóbal de las Casas (where he used to live) and Berriozábal (where he lives now). While producing these images I examined how my father chose which memories he would bring with him through a different stage of life. Some letters, he burnt; others he held onto tightly. I learned that a house is only a home when it is filled with objects that represent us and our past. So, I became interested in photographing the windows, the walls and all the parts of the old house that were slowly losing meaning and parts of the new one that were slowly starting to take shape. I watched how the light penetrated the glass and made abstractions on the ceiling as my father built us a new home.