In the face of migration, political rupture, and cultural erasure, Strategies for Remembering invites viewers to reflect on the notion of home as a fluid and emotional space—shaped by memory, the body, and absence. It reflects on how we anchor ourselves to the world through the repetition of gestures, the intimacy of objects, and the spaces we try to recreate even when we are far from our starting point.

Conceived as part of the series Global Spotlight At MoCA Arlington, the exhibition intentionally “bends the frame,” expanding the gaze beyond national borders to an affective geography: Cuba-Zuela. Used internally, and often with pejorative connotations, this linguistic hybrid is reclaimed here as an act of solidarity, affirming the historical and cultural affinity between Cuba and Venezuela. Two nations united by the Caribbean Sea, marked by parallel struggles and linked by two sister diasporas.

The sea—a body that both connects and separates—becomes a symbolic axis in the exhibition: it connects people “across the water” and contains within the ebb and flow of its tides stories of power, migration, survival, and rebirth. Through this grouping, the exhibition resists strictly national curatorial models and instead honors the porosity of Caribbean identity and the solidarities born of necessity and generosity.

The artists featured in the exhibition construct a visual language rooted in the material and immaterial dimensions of memory. They work with personal archives, domestic objects, architectural references, and embodied gestures to evoke their own sense of identity. Memory here is not static, but vulnerable and in motion. It lives in a grandmother's knitting technique, in an imagined building, in a vase that recalls the shape of its emptiness. Together, they trace emotional territories that transcend borders and notions of statehood, embracing the radical tenderness involved in keeping memory alive. The artists insist on presence, ultimately sharing stories not of what we have lost, but of what we carry with us.

Global Spotlight: Tactics for Remembering is organized by Fabiola R. Delgado, guest curator.

Participating artists: Amalia Caputo, Reynier Leyva Novo, and Lisu Vega in collaboration with Carlos Pedreañez