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ANDEAN_GLITCH_DREAM

Us mestizos are fragmented in a way. We’re not European and we’re not Native. We’re both. And neither. And a combination. And a painful reminder. And a disconnected identity. It is ultimately lonely. Melancholic. Which is why we make the music we make. And the art we make.

The feeling of belonging is not alien to us and yet we may never enjoy it fully. I am lucky to have felt it here and there. It almost always comes to visit where one can see mountains bathed in sunlight.

Growing up in Quito, I was oblivious to the fact that not everyone grows up in a city that is split by the equator and sits so daringly close to the sun.

It was only when I left my native country in search for fortune elsewhere that I came to realize how attached I am to these Andes mountains. Marvels of Nature revered as spiritual parents by the First Nations of what is now Ecuador.

Green and gold, they create fertile valleys where people have settled through the millennia. One of which is home to the capital city of Ecuador: Quito. There, houses go up in the steepest hills and appear almost as if they are trying to climb to the top, yearning for the sun on cold mountain mornings.

These images and others in the series are available as limited-edition digital collectibles and were generated using the algorithm (or algorithm stack) known as Midjourney which is sometimes referred to as an AI - my role was crafting the text-prompts and curating the outputs from many iterations.