LAS FLORES MUEREN DOS VECES

Las Flores mueren dos veces explores a parent-child relationship filled with loss, silence, death, and reconciliation. My father died when I was 15, but I wasn't told it was suicide until I turned 30. That's when I began revisiting the images, places, and memories left behind. Margarito, a gardener by profession, wrote a farewell letter in which he wrote about plants and said, "Forgive me and communicate with me." After receiving this information, I started revisiting my family archive and my father's last garden using digital strategies to alter images. By manipulating the structural data of family photographs, I deconstruct images and narratives a glitch or digital error as a tool, creating new images that serve as metaphors for "corrupted memories." Simultaneously, a three-dimensional representation of the garden through photogrammetry addresses memory's plasticity, represented in plants my father grew that remain alive today. I seek to shape his absence through images and establish a dialogue between our worlds. My approach centers on how technological interventions alter an image's primal meaning, expanding the media to new ways of consumption. This personal story unfolds in three chapters: code-altered analog photos, digital plants made following my father's instructions, and an immersive VR garden. This project is my answer to the last words my father wrote and an invitation to think about all the relationships that we once formed and that continue to develop after death.