The exhibition began with the effective transformation of the gallery through two cascading walls of space blankets lit with purple-bluish hues, producing an inviting entranceway. Made of these simple materials, the sparkling hallway evoked a series of conceptual and formal possibilities that are rich in meaning. In the context of U.S. anti-migration policies, they recall the emergency blanket as a distress beacon, connecting the exhibition to themes of immigration, naturalization, and nationhood. Another interpretation includes its symbolic meaning as a first aid blanket, linking it to the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, which continues to affect Puerto Rico today. The reflective surface also resonates with the aerospace industry – specifically, the presence of NASA in Florida, which played a central role in the videos on view in the gallery.

Once inside the four-channel video installation, the audience was invited to recline on beanbags and be absorbed into the unfolding scenery and narrative. Working in tandem, each projection showed a different perspective from the thirty-minute film, a kaleidoscope effect that echoed throughout. The film moves fluidly through different aspects of Puerto Rican life in Florida, from the pulsations of the dance floor to the vertigo­ inducing liftoff of a space shuttle; from the homes in the marsh with their Puerto Rican flags to the kitsch inner chambers of Disney World’s iconic “It’s A Small World” boat ride. Testimonies punctuate the ambient soundscape, contextualizing the visual poetry and giving it further depth.

Mixing grainy, super-8 archival footage with seamless cinematic photography, Foreign in a Domestic Sense plays on distortions of time, on nostalgia as a complex and powerful tool of remembrance. In one of these remembrances, an interviewee, Alessandra, says, “I would ask Puerto Ricans if they felt happier in Florida, and they would answer they felt safer.” In another segment, paired with POV-recorded footage of a rocket launch, Ángel offers his reflection: “In Puerto Rico there was a great view of space during the darkness after Maria.” Someone named Sofía responds, “My great concern wasn’t the hurricane, but what came after.” These fragments of Puerto Rican life in Florida, form a patchwork of identities relating back to the home they have left. Each voice reaches into the past to make sense of its present situatedness.

While there is underlying melancholy in parts of the film, resilience and beauty are also central to its overall arc. One of its most powerful segments is rooted in the dance floor as a space for communion, a site where Puerto Ricans find each other again in Florida. The onscreen images resonate with the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, in which half of the forty-nine people killed were Puerto Rican. Through their depictions of a nightclub, the artists commemorate this tragic event while maintaining a powerful and celebratory tone of queer solidarity. A sentence transcribed from Ramón’s interview rein­forces this notion: “I love the club as a platform that allows us to enter the risk of being together, this effort to find our pleasure together.” In Foreign in a Domestic Sense, moments like these, of which there are many, offer hope and strength in the form of community. Split across an ocean, Puerto Ricans are still brought together by the rhythmic splendour of a culture united in dance.