819-822-9600, ext. 2260 gallery@ubishops.ca

Florencia Sosa Rey –

Artist’s reflections

 

“But they all have in common that once a week, they can exist with their peers in Spanish,
in a social sphere outside the family environment,
receiving a legacy of their cultural roots from a distance.’’
– Camila Vásquez

December 2024

I spent my first days in residency in downtown Sherbrooke trying to build connection with the urban environment through personal errands and flanâge. At the multicultural grocery store I recall thinking: is learning folk dance from a ‘foreign country of the place’ the same as importing products? Be it a first generation, second or third gen person: deep feeling of nostalgia is expressed through the importation of foreign products (or matter) from different homelands. Dance is a cultural matter. This desire for a specific good is passed on by the practice of one’s culture in community; a habit, a sentiment shared with acquainted and close people of one place. What is at the source of the desire to embody a memory, to consume something, also present in grocery stores. Is it a nostalgia for taste, shapes, movement, rhythm, a texture in space; a vision echoing the reality afar?

I wonder what guided the children’s impulse to take part in these dance classes?
What was at stake in their curiosity?  Some may be first generation kids, immigrating with their families at a young age. Others are second generation, born and raised locally, mirroring in part their parents’ culture. Some may be third gen, farther from the source, becoming more hybrid, digging into their roots while they can, only if the desire is present. All of them are encouraged by some kind of creative nostalgia and pride for their legacy, I believe. How much consciousness is held in this choice at this young age?