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Koral Carballo

Blood Summons | La Sangre llama

Koral Carballo Blood Summons | La Sangre llama

“This is the hidden history of an Afro-descendant family”, Carballo explains. “The nation-state intended to erase and hide our ancestors, our history”. From the outside, Mexico is perceived as a nation of mixed heritage, having emerged from the violent encounter between European colonisers and Indigenous populations. Yet the histories of people of Indigenous and African descent remain largely unknown, since they were often labelled as mestizos, their identities incorporated into a greater whole despite their cultural singularity.

Carballo’s work is about a journey to understand one’s origin and to uncover ancestral knowledge, refuting official narratives about miscegenation, countering racist ideologies and policies of racial assimilation. Using her personal biography and family history as a starting point, the artist seeks to connect to her ancestry, reclaiming it, within a context that continues to marginalise. Photography becomes a medium to reestablish a sense of connection to the past, and a means of preserving one’s identity, projecting into the future. It serves a healing purpose, necessary to “make memory” as stated by the artist.

Portraits of her parents and grandparents are taken from the family album and juxtaposed with images of nature, rural landscapes, and domestic spaces, searching for a sense of belonging, for home. Yet this shift in one’s position, a deliberate displacement, enables previously suppressed stories and identities to emerge. In Carballo’s words: “I make photographs thinking of healing the colonial wounds of gender, race and class that have crossed our history. Afro-descent in Mexico is a reality and this is a letter to memory.”

Koral Carballo Blood Summons | La Sangre llama