In the Presence of an Absence is a multimedia installation by Andrew Johnson about lost language, fractured memories, and fragmented histories.

Anyone who has looked into their family history knows that when we try to understand our ancestors, we are often trying to also understand something about ourselves. But what can be learned about one’s self when the history has become so fragmented and fraught that very little can be known? What does one do with the unknown?

This multimedia installation revolves around my great-grandfather Florencio Garcia, whose life in New Mexico a century ago has always been a mystery to me. In this intimate room every image, word, or object conceals as much as it reveals. The space hints at American history, politics, assimilation propaganda, and autobiography, but always pulls back. There’s a story right in front of you but it’s scrambled. It’s revealed and then concealed. It comes forward and then retreats.

I’ve become convinced that when you’ve been severed from your first language, from the language of your childhood, the language you dream in, the generations that follow lose access to so much that otherwise might get passed down. Stories are lost, family histories are lost, memory is lost, a sense of origin is lost. Yet we remain in the presence of an absence.