I listened to a podcast where you mentioned you were born in Mexico, came to Canada when you were 7, and then returned to Mexico for 2 more years before officially moving back to Canada. Can you talk a bit about that experience and how it affected your sense of home?

Experiencing culture shock at such a young age was incredibly formative. It wasn’t until my brother, and I returned to Mexico that we gained a more nuanced perspective—we began noticing the differences between the two cultures on both macro and micro levels. I remember constantly asking my parents questions: “Why aren’t there glass shards on top of the walls in Canada? Why are kids selling packs of gum on the streets in Mexico? Why are the churches built so differently? Where’s the street food? Where’s all the color?” We often speak about how it took us leaving Mexico and coming back to truly see it for what it is—the good and the bad. That experience, both consciously and subconsciously, has had a big influence on how I create work about where I’m from. It shaped my understanding of home as something layered, not fixed.

How has that manifested in the work you make?

My trips back home have become quasi-archaeological journeys to unearth a precious resource: memory. I’m looking to make memories, as much as I’m looking to validate my childhood memories if that makes sense… These research-driven expeditions manifest in various ways: scouring my aunt’s house for family albums, documenting everyday moments in a life that now feels foreign, and seeking cultural artifacts at any and every “tianguis” (flea market). For my family, these flea markets serve as spaces of cultural reclamation, allowing us to bring fragments of home back to Canada. However, as these spaces increasingly cater to tourists, I’ve come to realize that I, too, am now a tourist in my own home. This duality—belonging and displacement—led me to work with scrap materials within the more experimental and conceptual side of my practice.

Who or what initially sparked your interest in photography?

It all started by chance. I had dropped a biology course in grade 11, and photography was the only class available to take instead. I had just moved to a new city halfway through high school, it was tough making new friends, and I was already tapping into my artistic side by reading and writing poetry. My first assignment in that class was to take photos with my iPod Touch. A couple weeks later, my brother and I visited our grandparents in Mexico during March Break, and I picked up my first film camera at a tianguis called “Los Sapos”. I spent most of my summer in Mexico with a camera in hand documenting the streets. But if I had to pinpoint a defining influence, it would be when my mom showed me Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También (2001). It’s a film I don’t watch often because I’m a bit precious about the experience. The way it voyeuristically frames Mexico—its people and streets—as a central character throughout the road trip deeply shaped how I view and document my home. Another influential moment was discovering Jeff Wall’s “A Sudden Gust of Wind” (1993)—I remember thinking to myself, I want to do that.

Can you recall the first time you captured an image that you were really proud of?

By the time I got to grade 12, I had thrown myself into the arts which included co-founding a school newspaper. For one of the articles, I decided to cover the screening of the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. At first, I went to a screening not knowing what to expect and was completely blown away by the immersive experience and audience participation—it was like nothing I’d ever seen. I went back the very next day with my camera. There’s a moment early in the film when the main characters step out of their car during a storm and use a newspaper to cover their heads from the rain—which in turn cues people in the audience to pull out prop newspapers while others in the back spray water guns into the crowd to simulate rain. Capturing this moment was the first time I felt like I had really caught something surreal—a moment that felt alive, strange, and magical all at once. I was proud of it and found that after taking that photograph, I was interested in creating artwork provided more questions than answers and left people wondering what they were looking at or how it was accomplished.

There’s something about the framing in your winning image that kept drawing me back to it. What’s the story behind that image? What are we looking at and how did you end up capturing it?

I took this image on the very last day of my most recent trip to Mexico—my first time back in ten years. I had spent two months visiting family across different cities while documenting the streets and local cultural events I had never experienced before: Lucha Libre, Palenque, Jaripeo, local fiestas and fairs. On my last day in Mexico, I decided—on a whim—to head to the Huey Atlixcáyotl festival in Atlixco with another photographer named Eliu Sandoval Gomez. Unfortunately, we arrived too late and most of the main celebrations were already over, but the zócalo was still packed with families and kids. What stood out to me were the balloon vendors—around eight of them, evenly spaced around the square. It was visually striking. I walked around the square photographing each vendor. Vendedora de Globos was the strongest image from that series—a familiar sight to anyone who grew up seeing scenes like that outside of churches and parks across Mexico. What’s funny is how differently the image is read by Canadian or Western viewers—people wondering me how I edited in so many balloons or where I bought so many for the model to hold. That kind of response makes it apparent how deeply rooted the photo is in a specific cultural context.

I wanted to ask you about some of your work that is quite different from this particular street photo. Can you talk a bit about exploring memory through your collage and photo transfer work?

My series “Mining for Some Sort of Continuity” was initially inspired by 20th-century Mexican Exvotos—devotional paintings on metal sheets. I was drawn to how the materiality of the artwork shaped the narrative: rust bleeding through paint, flaking surfaces revealing metal beneath, and bent corners quietly marking the passage of time. These works were commissioned by individuals who would recount an anecdote to an artist, who in turn would fabricate a representation of someone else’s memory. That process made me reflect on how much of my own understanding of family and culture has come through my parents’ photographs and stories. It raised a question for me: can I lay claim over a memory that is not my own? At first, I experimented by printing family photos onto corroded metal—drawn to the rich patinas of oxidized copper. Eventually, my material explorations expanded to include corrugated metal and shards of colored glass, inspired by childhood memories of security walls in Mexico, where broken bottles were embedded in cement as improvised barbed wire. Working with photo transfers has felt like the perfect medium for exploring themes of memory, migration and diasporic identity. I genuinely believe images seek out the materials they belong to. When an image is made to migrate across surfaces, it will let you know when it’s found its home. Each scratch, blemish, or distortion becomes a metaphor—representative of how memory is always in flux and can be reinterpreted depending on the viewer, and echoing the ways that immigration reshapes identity over time.

Who else is making work that excites you right now?

I can’t name just one so here is a handful: Paul Mpagi Sepuya is someone whose work I find truly revolutionary; he’s completely subverting expectations around studio photography and portraiture. I’m also really drawn to artists like Justin A. Carney, Yasmina Hilal, Amber Topilsek, and Yashna Kaul—each of them uses archival imagery in ways that emphasize the materiality of the photograph and abstract the concept of memory. Within the Latinx diasporas, Thalia Gochez and Juan Brenner create stunning photographic portraits of members of their communities, while Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Teresa Margolles orchestrates expansive, politically charged works that live at the intersection of science, culture, and technology. Finally, I have to shout out a fellow OCAD University graduate, Montreal-based experimental animator Nik Arthur, who creates the most beautiful and thoughtful videos I have seen. Every time he shares something new; I get this childlike sense of wonder. He works with unconventional materials—ice, sand, mold, water, fog, light reflections, snow—and often posts behind-the-scenes content that makes it clear: you don’t need fancy equipment to make something impactful. You just need a strong idea and a willingness to experiment.

Can you describe a photo that you currently have somewhere in your home? What is it, who took it, and what do you like about it?

One photo I recently hung up and can’t stop admiring is a family portrait from my mom’s childhood, taken on the day of her first communion in 1970. We’re not sure who took it, but in the photo, my mom is standing in front of my grandparents, holding the leaf of a mostly leafless sapling, looking away from the camera. My grandma is focused on something in her hands, while my grandpa and aunt are looking straight at the lens. What’s framed on my wall though, is a scanned cluster of three images held together by a paperclip. The central family portrait is bordered by two others, their subjects peeking out from underneath: my grandparents on vacation in Texas with their friends, and another portrait of my mom and aunt with their cousins, all dressed in red, their shoes barely visible at the bottom of the frame. The detail that made me hang this cluster—and what keeps drawing me back to it—is something I only recently noticed. The photo of my mom with her cousins, taken years after the first communion photo, was shot in the exact same location of my grandparents’ yard. In it, you can see the sapling from the first photo, now fully grown into a small tree full of leaves, peeking into the frame! It’s such a quiet but powerful marker of time. Having moved so often in my life, I’ve never stayed anywhere long enough to watch a tree grow. So, to discover this almost “ready-made” collage of memory and time, arranged by pure accident, felt incredibly poetic!

What’s the last thing that you read, listened to or watched, that truly blew your mind?

I recently watched Nickel Boys (2024) and was blown away by the cinematography. I’m usually not a fan of POV shots, but Jomo Fray captured stunning, thoughtful moments in the film, often in mundane details that don’t necessarily move the plot forward. One scene that stuck with me features the main character, Elwood, reading a comic book in a store. He looks up and sees the heels of two women—one black, one white—as they peer through the counters while they are shopping; their steps synchronized for a couple of seconds before walking in opposite directions. These subtle and poetic moments contrast with the intensity of the tragic narrative. It reminded me of Emmanuel Lubezki’s voyeuristic style in Y Tu Mamá También, where the background and environment are given visual importance as if they were a main character themselves.

What’s one thing you’d like to accomplish in the next year or so?

I think that branching out my practice outside of Toronto is something I really want to accomplish, whether that is through a residency, an exhibition, an art fair, etc. I want to be able to have the work be perceived by people from other art scenes in different cities; especially ones that have more visible artistic presence of Latinidad. Ideally, I would like for my next trip to Mexico to be work related – and am seeking opportunities to do so.

What about one thing you’d like to accomplish in your lifetime?

I’d love to re-establish roots in Mexico and never have to go another 10 years without visiting. Ideally, I’d like to base my practice there and explore new themes beyond nostalgia, memory, displacement, and diasporic identity. I wonder what will be significant enough for me to create work about at that point.

Ernesto Cabral de Luna’s Website

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