The Green Suitcase

In 2023, I received a Canada Council Grant to conduct a family research project. 

When we came to Canada, my mother brought along a suitcase full of photographs — the green suitcase. 

Many of the photos were of my grandfather, who was a political figure in the 1960s and 70s communist regime. 

I grew up with my grandpa as an everyday presence in my life. But he had another, parallel, and classified life, as a general and secret agent. He never talked about the details of his work over the years and he took his secrets to the grave. 

Many of the photographs in the suitcase depict him at various functions and delegations. I traveled to Bucharest and visited the state archives to seek declassified information about the general. I didn’t find anything deeper than his personnel file, and the mystery remains salient. 

I used my research and the photographs to create a group of images that bring together themes I had been working on for decades: the role of images in understanding reality; fragmentation and displacement; the narrative that appears between abstraction and realism. The power of images. 

I consider this my richest and most complex work to date.