Sofía Córdova

dawn_chorusiii: the fruit they don’t have here / coro_del_albaiii: la fruta que no tienen aquí/???? iii: ???????

Sofía Córdova’s film dawn_chorusiii: the fruit they don’t have here / coro_del_albaiii: la fruta que no tienen aquí/???? iii: ??????? weaves together six California migration stories that resist dominant social narratives that flatten the experience of migrants. Though each woman’s story is based on interviews conducted by Córdova through voice memos or phone calls, the women’s lines in the film are reinterpreted and altered by the artist as a gesture that affords them opacity and relative anonymity. The opening sequence begins with four of the women looking into the camera, reciting a poem about the transition from winter to spring in Spanish and Mandarin: the birds dropping seeds they brought from afar, planting saplings that grow into trees bearing the fruit they don’t have in their new homes. By overlapping or disguising the women’s voices, Córdova purposefully seeds doubt about who is telling which story.