Another Day, Another Highway

Thirty years ago - almost to the exact date - I was adopted from Bogota, Colombia. I was just a few months old, so of course, I don't remember that day. Yet, that single day, changed the course of my life in a way that I think about on a consistent basis. I went from being a girl named Maria Paula who's life would be unrecognizable, maybe not even relatable to the one I lived as a girl named Katie.

Being adopted from Colombia became one of the strongest aspects of my identity while simultaneously being the most vague and confusing. From an early age, I began to ask questions about identity: Can one define his or her own identity? Or, is identity socially constructed? Is it a combination of both? And what happens if society’s views of someone’s identity conflicts with that person’s self-proclaimed identity? And these are the questions I explore as an artist through video, performance and narrative fiction.

I recently went on a quick 5 day trip to Cali, Colombia and had an amazing experience speaking with locals about how I had been born Colombia but had never been back. In just that short amount of time, I learned so much about a culture that was never truly mine but with one I want so badly to identify. As cliche as it might sound, a trip to Colombia to create a film would be a life changing experience. Not just as an artist or filmmaker but as someone who constantly struggles to understand my identity fully.