Tarrah Krajnak
Time Twin (Triptych), Self-Portrait as Angie, Lima, Peru 1979 / Lima, Peru 2014 / Claremont, CA, 2018
Time Twin (Triptych), Self-Portrait as Angie, El Jardín de Senderos Que Se Bifurcan, Lima, Peru 1979 / Lima, Peru 2014 / Claremont, CA, 2018 © Tarrah Krajnak
Tarrah Krajnak is a Peruvian-born Los-Angeles based artist.
About this series:
Named after a Borges story by the same title, El Jardín de Senderos Que Se Bifurcan explores the process of tracing my origins amidst contradictory familial narratives. Indigenous to Peru and orphaned as an infant I was adopted into a working-class transracial family from the American coal country and raised as a twin to my African American brother. This early experience of racial difference established my ongoing preoccupation with belonging, orphanhood, ancestral exile, origins, and the way these constructs are written on the body and in the archive. In this project, I set out not to recover some stable authentic identity hidden by the circumstances of my birth and adoption, but rather to build a psychic history, to imagine lineages, to invent mothers, and to resurrect ancestors in an effort to understand my place within the larger political, social, and historical narratives of my birthplace– Lima, Peru circa 1979.
TW // Please note, this article contains references to sexual violence