Personae II

Personae II is a multimedia exhibition featuring large-format photographs, slow-motion video portraits, a VR 360 behind-the-scenes experience, video interviews with the participants and an interactive installation replicating the original photo set, where visitors can have their own portraits taken.

The photographic series is divided into two distinct styles: one features subjects in vibrant, colorful sets, symbolizing the transformative power of imagination and how anyone can reshape their environment. The other series uses a dark backdrop, serving as a reflective “mirror” for viewers to explore shared connections and commonalities.

The project explores the enduring human spirit, expressed through dreams, fantasy, and creativity, to provide perspective on lived experiences. Carlos David collaborates with a diverse group unified by themes of conflict and trauma. By working with underrepresented groups, the project fosters dialogue between viewer and subject, offering participants a platform for self-expression while raising awareness of critical social issues through the lens of fictionalized imagery.

Interviews

Cleopatra – Yesenia Torres

After an injury left her disabled, she was ready to end a relationship, sure she was no longer worth loving. She now says that feeling comes from a lack of knowledge, not from the truth. Speaking in both English and Spanish, she describes arriving in a new world with no plan to shrink in it.

Tlahuilli – Arantxa Araujo

Ten women die in Mexico every day. They don’t die, they are killed. Arantxa makes art to confront and denounce the violence our society looks away from.

Queen Elizabeth – Garnet Rubio

As Queen Elizabeth I, Garnet describes falling into a hole of hopelessness again and again, then climbing out and filling it in with soil. Sure that people are not born to hate, they ask to be seen as people, not as a punch line or a costume. Something stubborn inside kept saying to go on.

Genovevo de la O – Genoel Ramirez

His sister always said he looked like Genovevo de la O. He speaks about the borders as something placed on us. We are all American, someone just drew a line.

Aya feeling beautiful – Aya Aziz

Sometimes feeling small in daily life, but whole on a stage. Aya writes musicals as a way to make art about things larger than one person: injustice, racism, classism, xenophobia. After a long season of proving themselves, what they want now is quieter, to be strong, still, and at ease with who they are.

Ann Margret – Jamie Gonzalez

Stepping into Ann Margreat, Jaime remembers being told early that she would never be a model, then finding work posing for drawing classes, where her body became the subject instead of the problem. She talks about diet culture, about a grown man who criticized her body in front of a room when she was seventeen, and about the pleasure of refusing to hate herself.

Ed Burnet – Don Bajema

On a hot July morning, Don reads something written for that day. From the backseat of a car, the author watch a farmer and a traveling singer fall quietly in love, and follows them into the corn field. It ‘s Carmen’s birthday.

360 Behind the Scenes

Moving Portraits

Carlos David

We are told who we are before we get to say it: immigrant, Latino, the label that arrives first and stays. Carlos David invites a diverse group of people, connected by conflict and trauma, to become an alter ego or a character they choose. Through fiction and fantasy, the project looks for a way across, toward dialogue and understanding.