Coming Home: en la memoria y el tiempo begins with a question many of us know well: Where are you from? It is a question that follows us across borders, generations, and lifetimes, one that carries with it memory, longing, and the search for belonging. This exhibition reflects on what it means to explore time passed and time remembered, the quiet urgency of being present enough to document, to witness, to tell stories, and to keep memory alive. For those who were born or raised in places different from where they now live, home often exists in fragments: in gestures, spaces, and relationships carried forward.

The artists in Coming Home are rooted in distinct cultural histories spanning Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia but share a common experience shaped by New York City. Their work speaks a shared language, not only through heritage or Spanish, but through the universality of human experience: family, intimacy, and continuity. Once we leave a place behind, our connection to it does not disappear. Home persists in celebrations and kitchens, in the cadence of daily life, in the act of returning sometimes physically, often through memory.

Rooted in En Foco’s longstanding commitment to amplifying the voices of artists of color, Coming Home: en la memoria y el tiempo affirms photography as a vital tool for preserving personal and collective histories. Together, these works honor the quiet, enduring ways artists document their lives, asserting that memory itself is an act of resistance, care, and belonging.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Mateo Arciniegas Huertas (B 1993, Bogotá, Colombia) His work focuses on loss, the passage of time, migration, love, and existence. starting from the autobiographical as a self-reflecting vehicle for understanding and accepting the human experience. Arciniegas Huertas explores his familiar transgenerational past and present as a Colombian, Latino American, and immigrant.

Mónica Félix (b.1984) Visual artist, professional photographer, and yoga teacher from Puerto Rico, based in NYC. She has a BA in Communications from the University of Puerto Rico, a Photography Certificate from Pratt Institute, and a Visual Arts MFA from Columbia University. Félix’s work has been featured in multiple solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Spain at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Jewish Museum, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and Universidad de Salamanca. She was granted the 2013 Lexus Scholarship for Artists, and more recently she was the featured artist of The Great Hall Exhibition at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She has participated in art residencies such as Jiwar in Barcelona, SOMA in México, LMCC’s Governors Island Summer Residency and R.A.R.O. Buenos Aires. Félix works with photography, moving image and projection, that exists within ephemeral sculpture and site-specific installation. Her work explores identity through a deeply personal story that represents the migratory experience of a queer femme body, spirituality in connection to world events.

Chris Perez (b. Brooklyn, 1993) is a photographer based in New York. His work explores identity, memory, and belonging, and reflects on the personal and cultural complexities of growing up as the son of an immigrant.