The Whole World is My Father

I prefer the uncertainty of not knowing where you are because to me you are everywhere both of us existing in a singular moment on a singular sphere floating in a giant galaxy exactly right now both of us all of us within a galaxy’s womb where bromeliads grow in abundance like secrets like whispering, like pythons, and green iguanas abundant like micro-ecosystems, and our pink flora, and our racing thoughts abundant like a mothers (un)conditional love abundant like utopic-freshwater-marshes abundant like pollen and pattern all of us in a galaxy’s womb where maybe there once was peace or molten lava crackling to me you are nothing maybe on a hot day when each of my crevices sweat and stick together maybe when the hot pavement and the steel horseshoes melt together maybe the steel and hot heated aluminum and horses and pink pantyhose and your rough shave and this sweet guava have more in common than we think maybe on a hot day the sweat that burns my eyes will remind me of your dark black eyebrows and how maybe today they’re not black anymore but more grey, like steel like aluminum like thermal expansion I prefer the uncertainty of not knowing where you are because to me, you are everywhere Alina Perez (1995, Miami, Florida. Lives and works in New York) received their BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and their MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art. Perez was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2017, and has attended residencies at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, the OxBow School of Art in Michigan and the Vermont Studio Center. Their work has been exhibited at the Taubman Museum of Art, Virginia; Atlanta Contemporary, Georgia; Arcadia Missa, London; James Cohan Gallery, New York; Rachel Uffner, New York; Company Gallery, New York; M+B, Los Angeles and Deli Gallery, New York.