Yo no estoy aquí (2010) is a collaboration with Gabriela Torres Olivares that explores the process of virtuality as the answer to “where are you when you are not here?” That absence is the presence of absence: the emptiness that gives form to a figurative presence, one concept cannot exist without the other. As reader-spectators remove the 300 flash fiction texts on post-its from the wall, they take with them the reason why a specific individual cannot be present.

The moment a reader-spectator reads a text, a virtual dynamic is created, one in which everyone that is not here exists through the other. When all the post-its have been removed, the text “yo soy aquí” is all that remains on the wall. The address stamped onto each Post-it is the site yonoestoyaqu1.blogspot.com, where visitors may find out more about the project and read the other texts from the installation.

Yo no estoy aquí = yo soy aquí (I am not here = my presence persists here) because one concept cannot exist without the other. This project explores the process of virtuality as the answer to “where are you when you are not here?” That absence is the presence of absence: the emptiness that gives form to a figurative presence.  Everything that is not, so that something can become everything that is not here.  The present is everything that is but also that which is not. As reader-spectators remove the post-its, they take with them the reason why a specific individual cannot be present. The moment a reader-spectator reads a text, a virtual dynamic is created, one in which everyone that is not here exists through the other.

This project was created as part of Les Figues Press‘ Not Content writers-in-residence curatorial series and was exhibited at LACE, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.