Quisiera Estar Allí Contigo, SS26
Participatory work | Canvas, marker, and collective writing
Recently, Quisiera Estar Allí Contigo, SS26 opened in El Salvador as part of a collaborative exhibition. Although I could not be physically present for the opening, the work itself emerged precisely from that impossibility.
The piece began with a simple but difficult truth: I wanted to be there, and I could not.
From that absence came an invitation.
At the center of the installation is a blank canvas that visitors are invited to intervene with by writing the name of someone they wish could be present with them, along with the date. As the exhibition unfolds, the canvas slowly transforms into a living archive of longing, memory, affection, and connection.
Some names belong to people who live far away. Others belong to those who could not attend. Some belong to people who are no longer alive. The work does not distinguish between these forms of absence. Instead, it holds them together with equal tenderness, allowing each participant to momentarily bring someone into presence through the act of naming.
What interests me deeply about this gesture is its simplicity. Writing a name is small, almost fragile, yet it carries enormous emotional weight. A single inscription becomes evidence of attachment, memory, grief, care, and desire. The canvas becomes populated not by bodies, but by relationships.
As more names accumulate, the piece evolves into a collective emotional landscape — a constellation of people carried across geography, time, and even death through acts of remembrance. The work does not attempt to resolve absence or erase distance. Rather, it makes visible the ways we continue loving across impossibility.
Seeing the canvas fill during the opening was profoundly moving. What began as my own inability to be present expanded into a shared space where others could articulate their own forms of longing and connection. The work now belongs as much to the participants as it does to me.
These images, from the opening night and the evolving canvas, document only part of the piece. The true work exists in the accumulation of gestures, in the names written by strangers, and in the invisible relationships those names carry with them.
Quisiera Estar Allí Contigo, SS26 continues to grow throughout the exhibition, sustained entirely through participation.
Thank you to everyone who has made someone present through this work.
Exhibition information
Expográfica Línea Incidente
Reception Thursday, April 30, 2026, at 6:00 pm
Sala Nacional de Exposiciones Salarrué
6ª y 10ª Cl. Pte. y Parque Cuscatlán, 25 Avenida Sur
San Salvador, El Salvador
