Sofia Suars “Origin”: search for identity

Origen is the first stop of the new multidisciplinary project by feminist activist and photographer Sofia Suars, which brings together the photographic, narrative and audiovisual universe of the sensations of a whole life in search of identity. 

5 photos

The artist, born in Bolivia but based in the city of Barcelona, lives life with a special sensitivity and has demonstrated it with each of her projects. Under the platform IsDermis, her most intimate work focused on celebrating the diversity of skins, comes Origen. A documentary piece created since 2018, which gathers the feelings that have been accompanying the photographer all these last years, after discovering that she had to live with psoriasis for the rest of her life since she was 8 years old.

The relationship with the body, biculturality and the whole process of searching for identity permeates all of Sofia Suars’ creative processes. Since she published IsDermis, a series of photographs and texts that at the beginning, in 2017, had as its main inspiration the skin disease she suffers from. Three years after this and with the programme Goosebumps by Novartis and Radio Primavera Sound, which deals with the relationship between skin and music, the artist opens up again with Origen.

10 photos

IDENTITY SEARCH

Búsqueda is the first video of this project in which we find a visual narration of the feelings of attachment, loneliness and melancholy that the author has felt all these years living in a bridge of identity between two cultures. The film is a sample of the reality that Sofia Suars had to live in Bolivia. The questions, the physical search in the place of origin, the environment and the people she has been documenting over the years.

“Since memories have come into my consciousness, I have felt a silent and constant sadness at almost every stage of my life. Accentuated on journeys, wondering whether I was here or there.
When did this feeling begin?

Existence is something unpredictable for each person, and when it starts from birth as a nomad, the uncertainty is especially accentuated.
Melancholy wants to settle wherever it goes. It feeds on the attachment to belonging.

Identities, references, anything we can cling to in order to take root.
We live trying to make sense of this search for identity. The need to be part of something. But perhaps the only time when we really know who we are is in childhood, when we are barely aware of being alive, which is precisely why it is the most genuine human form closest to our origin. After those early years. Everything becomes very disconcerting; reality runs over our processes.

That sadness that I have always felt is nothing more than an eternal nostalgia for the inability to find myself in references. Sometimes I notice the joy in this solitude, it feels incalculably free. I enjoy the place without a place. At other times, on the other hand, I want to start all over again. Farewell after farewell. I no longer know how to live without missing”.

ISDERMIS presents ORIGIN
Filmed in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia during 2018, 2019 and 2021.

Written and directed by SOFIA SUARS @sofiasuars
Produced by ISDERMIS @isdermis
Creative direction GARA BÉJAR @azuldegara
Music LUCID EYEZ @lucid.eyez
Graphics TERESA ROFER @teresarofer

For more information, click here.