For the present exhibition, Ways of going back, Francisca Khamis presents two video works made from footage she recorded during a trip to the USA in 2018. Through the shaky lense of a handycam, she visited iconic, massively visited sightseeing places.

In Ways of going home, even more impressed by the colossal amount of people than by the indomitable force of nature, Khamis takes a contemplative look down to the ships that bring tourists closer to the Niagara Falls. Presented on a split screen, we see on each side extremely zoomed-in, almost abstract images of visitors agglomerated on the deck of the ferries, uniformed in blue and red plastic raincoats. Based on text fragments of the homonymous novel by chilean poet and writer Alejandro Zambra, Khamis subtitles the wordless sounds with childhood notions of getting lost and feeling home, placing us somewhere between memory and dream.

Riding a boat towards the Statue of Liberty, in No te olvides de mí it’s now us who are in close proximity to the water. Here, from the perspective of a common tourist trying to get a good shot of the island, we witness all of a sudden an unanticipated apparition from afar. The camera zooms in and tries to capture it. Wherever you are, my love, don’t forget about me, we hear Roberto Carlos singing, I just want to be in your thoughts, to believe for a moment that you think of me. The impossibility to grasp this vision with a steady frame reflects the experience of doubt, if what is seen is actually what is there.

Serpentina López