The Cuban Diaspora from interventions in the series Rumbo Norte: Beyond the Blue Wall (1994) by Cuban photographer Willy Castellanos

The issue of appearance is one of the most interesting to analyze from the perspective of critical image studies, especially when considering that the systemic order attempts to nullify our capacity for imagination.In this sense, this paper aims to engage in dialogue with the apparent nature of a landscape of irregular emigration that took place in Cuba in the 1990s.Assuming the deviation towards some interstices that occur in the figurativeness of the exodus, the provocation comes precisely from a photograph that blurs the body as a symptom of precariousness and reveals a surface that has been altered to include photographic images belonging to the series Rumbo norte: más allá del Muro Azul (1994) by Cuban photographer Willy Castellanos.the modification then becomes visible using simple materials such as red, black, and gold markers, whose use is justified in the political imagination and in the alteration of the visual narrative.The purpose has been to experiment with figural distortion, to place the migrant body in the full politicality of its circumstance: the lines, circles, and letters that are added-hung on the original image-become the appearance of a field that no longer necessarily starts from the documentary premise, but also allows us to problematize resistance and disperse the usual appearance from a new figure-background relationship, which expands the edges of the photo toward a reflection of a crack that still persists in Cuban reality.