Alejandra Miguel Dada

About

To encounter within the fabric of oneself the scattered pieces of something once lost, unseen and displaced is to create history.  As a third-generation Palestinian born and raised in El Salvador, I embody the tension between identity and absence. Palestine feels like a home I’ll never truly know, yet it lives in me through inherited artifacts, stories, and the weight of land passed down through blood. I often wonder if selfhood can be inherited? Passed down like a photograph or an heirloom? Maybe through genetics. Maybe through trauma. What I carry feels instinctual; an archive etched into my soul, wishing to be uncovered.

In my practice I delve into oral histories, family archives and memory to understand how displacement and belonging are preserved and transformed across generations. I also turn to my own body and mind as a site where preserved ancestral knowledge and lived experiences might surface and still speak truth.

I work primarily with oil paint, clay, and my grandfather’s film cameras; materials that hold a kind of energy that connects me to those who came before me. Through portraiture, I use the human face as a vessel for expression. Stripped of background or context, these figures hover over a space that mirrors how I often experience my own existence; between past and present, rooted yet dispersed. When I reproduce these faces, I am trying to tell a story that exists in the in-between. A story that is sometimes my own, sometimes a reflection of something much older. I attempt to make visible what is often felt but unseen.

Can souls from the past still speak through the archives we carry within ourselves? To me, my work is a conversation between generations, cultures, and strangers. A space where I allow myself to break open the archive, to question and reclaim my identity.