Valeria
Portrait with Nick Collura
Description: A young woman in a white flowy gown and floating hair plays a cello. Her figure rises above black and white smoke containing photographs of a chain-link fence and people pressed against it.
Portrait with Nick Collura
“Lately, I have found a place for myself. After a long time, I am focused on myself and learning about me.
I know that I am independent, especially with how accomplished I feel about going through high school without asking for a lot of help. I know about myself that I am mature. I deal with things that most kids wouldn't, I've grown from it and I don't really complain about it. I feel that anything that did happen happened for a reason and made me who I am today.
With my childhood, my parents were separated. I've had to move around a lot back and forth between houses. Sure, my parents were the people I went to play with and everything but they also worked. I spent a lot of my time by myself because my siblings were older and always had their own things to do. I did feel alone a lot, and sometimes I still do to this day.
My friends would describe me as very outgoing, always smiling and everywhere in a happy mood. My teachers would say I'm quiet. I don’t always participate. I just am there to learn. I feel like society would see me the opposite of how everybody I know sees me. I don't feel like society is always accepting. I just feel like I would be another Brown girl for some reason. It's always like the “why are you here?” tone. It's very upsetting. And then they're always shocked when I don’t act out the way they think I will, or when I'm nice or even when I smile.
If everybody was just educated on history - on what actually happens - or would take the time to just listen, that would help. At the same time, a lot of people are stubborn and just want to be right and just want to be mean. The protests this year have helped. I feel a lot of people have educated themselves, but a lot of people haven't either. Everyone has to do their own part in sharing and signing petitions, sitting down with their parents and having conversations.
Sometimes I feel like my first emotion for things is anger. And I feel like that just doesn't work out for me because then it makes me just angry about the state of the whole world. If I could change something about the world we are living in, it would be taking care of the Earth and not having kids in cages at the border. I do get angry and I don’t always know how to process it. There's just so much on top of everything else. I'm working every day to achieve my flow, I guess. I just want to be able to be calm and peaceful inside. I recently came out to my family. That was scary, but I didn't want to hold it in anymore. I felt I've held it in long enough. I'm not a very open person either so just being able to freely talk about it, I feel better.
Throughout the chaos I have felt in life, I've always had my music. That's always been there as my escape and my peace through everything. I’ve been playing my instrument my whole life. My cello is art, just like drawings and pictures. It's just the most beautiful instrument.
The flow in this portrait definitely represents something inside, something that I would want to achieve - to feel peaceful and flowing, I guess. I just want people to just look at this portrait and be able to understand that about me. And I want to impact people to be able to do the same thing and be able to find their own peace inside.”
Milwaukee, 2020