Born in Puerto Rico but raised in the United States, I have always had a complicated relationship with belonging. I grew up navigating the space between two cultures, often feeling not quite enough of either. Even as an adult, the question “Where are you from?” carries an underlying tension, anticipating the question that often follows: “No, where are you really from?”

Welcome Home explores identity, belonging, displacement, and the longing to reconnect with one’s roots.

A woman stands alone in an almost entirely empty room, its walls covered in rainforest wallpaper. The artificial landscape evokes Puerto Rico's lush landscape, but it is only a manufactured representation of nature. Two potted plants sit in the room, an attempt to bring nature inside while containing and controlling it.

Beyond the doorway is a lush rainforest representing my Puerto Rican homeland. The woman stands at the threshold between the constructed world behind her and the living landscape before her, suggesting both a return to her roots and a question about what it means to come home.

Through the room's window, the outside world burns. The pristine, artificial interior becomes a space of insulation, a place where reality can be decorated, contained, or ignored even as destruction continues beyond its walls.

The title Welcome Home is intentionally both comforting and complicated. It reflects a longing for connection to place, culture, and identity while questioning whether belonging is something others grant us or something we ultimately claim for ourselves. For me, home is not simply a geographic place. It is the possibility of embracing all the parts of myself without having to choose between them.