Vendado (2018) Pintura por Roselin Estephanía

Being from Venezuela is hard. We're in the middle of a dictatorship. Everything started to go downhill twenty years ago, when Hugo Chávez was elected.

He destroyed my country, the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world. It's true, we're small, in the middle of the caribbean. Look us up; the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world is smaller than California. And Chávez? He made himself rich, made the people hungry.

Somehow, he managed to have the richest country with the poorest people.

Last year, there was a nation wide blackout for five days. The fear, the anxiety, the food wasting away. Five days, no electricity, nowhere to run, we all thought that was it. The light? Never coming back.

Last year, I spent 12 hours a day, EVERYDAY, without electricity. Every. Single. Day. Sounds crazy? It is, when it comes to Venezuela there's no limit on how bad things can go. It can always be worse.

12 hours a day.

Couldn't sleep, couldn't work, stomachaches from anxiety made itself known. Welcome, nice to meet you.

VENDADA and VENDADO (Blindfolded), from my series "Ellos, la patria" (Them, the homeland) it's not about our dictatorship hiding things from us. We know very well what's going on. It's about us, closing our eyes in front of tragedy, trying to shield ourselves from the horror we're living.

But it doesn't work. It never does.

Even if you can't see the horror, even if you close your eyes real tight, you can still hear it, feel it. It manifests itself, doesn't like to be ignored.

You can close your eyes, but it won't make it stop breathing down your neck.

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