Diaspora

source: highlike

Work: Diaspora is a project about Identity in relation with its mutability according to the environment. This series investigates this fact in the context of the current situation, in which thousands of individuals emigrate to other countries every day to find a better future for them. At that point, there is a transition between the person we have been so far and the person we are going to be.

Reasons for migration are diverse but this does not change the period of adjustment. The situation in which the individual does not know if he is doing something because he wants to or because he must get used to that new life. This series reflects the modification in the behaviour as a help in the adaptation to a new environment, especially at which point the real mutation of an individual´s personality starts. The images show individuals as transparent silhouettes which reflect the individuals´ new environment, an environment they did not belong to until now. The silhouettes occupy a new space and they gradually merge into this new context, just like a chameleon.

A research about the inherent human need of belonging to a group and how, as the process of adaptation to the new culture is completed, the individual´s personality splits between the person we used to be and the person we are in our new place of residence.

“The protagonists of my pictures merge into their new houses, new neighbourhoods, new countries, in the same way as I find my place portraying them without showing them, showing just their camouflage, their inner fight for seeing themselves reflected in their new lives”. – Oscar Parasiego
Text: Marta Bupili.

Oscar Parasiego is a Spanish multi-disciplinary visual artist currently based in Birmingham. He graduated with an Honours Degree from the MA Fine Art Photography at the prestigious School of Photography EFTI in Madrid (2008). He has delivered several art projects over the last 10 years working in different countries and collaborating with very diverse communities.

His practice explores the truthfulness of photography and the inability of photography to capture the complexity of human self-reflection. Some of the themes explore identity, communication, emigration, death and relationships.

His artworks evoke surrealist aesthetics creating powerful and playful images, always in need of the observer to complete the journey.

He is currently interested in pushing photography’s boundaries and exploring the untruthfulness of photography with virtual and invisible technologies. His aim is to re-think photography in an innovative way, no longer as a 2D or frozen time instant but something else.

Oscar Parasiego uses photography as a mechanism through which he can know, in a more comprehensive way, people, and therefore know himself better. His works have been exhibited in Spain, Argentina, UK, Panama, Colombia and Portugal, widely disseminated in press and online and reached wide audiences.