Archipiélago was a continuing collaborative action following "el dolor de la partida" by Marielys Burgos Meléndez during the El Aranazo Performance Festival Kilometro Cero 2017 in Santo Domingo, DR.
We both started a performative walk through the Zona Colonial, a place we felt intense about, inscribed by colonial history. Marielys carried her material, a mirror, salt and stones wrapped in red cloth and I carried mine, a bucket of water. As we arrived to our point Marielys made her ritual of breaking the mirror with each stone, representing a specific pain of departures and migration, particularly Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean people having to leave their island for a better life. Before striking the mirror, each stone was sealed with a phrase that Marielys has been told or have heard in relation to this situation; words that carry guilt, conflict, pain, claims, and sadness.  After this was completed, she handed me the pieces and her red cloth for protection. Constructing Archipiélago was a symbolic healing ritual that entailed washing the pieces with salt and water, giving one piece of mirror to each person present and inviting them to contemplate the broken mirror landscape and place the given piece in a composition thus creating an accumulation of "broken islands", like the Caribbean, that carry a lot of pain but that have developed unique creativity and culture from this pain.