Bedtime Story


Caracas, Venezuela 2011-2014

Bedtime Story 2011

HD video, sound 05:06Caracas, Venezuela
In December 2010, I witnessed the cutting of a few hundred-year-old ceiba trees right in front of the house where I was staying in Caracas. Falling, chopping, and discarding of those trees was done without regard. Witnessing this became a powerful metaphor to represent my internal uneasiness, as I began the investigation of my father's disappearance. 
Spontaneously, I documented through video the events occurring at that moment. Later, I decided to edit this document and include primary sources and historical records. The work is finally presented as an installation, with the video images projected onto the walls of a room made from translucent fabric.  This alludes to the actual room where, in the form of a bedtime story, my mother tried to tell me why my father was not there with us.~
Experimental and biographical video filmed, edited and directed: Livia Daza-Paris. Special thanks to Luisa Villalba in Caracas. This work was part of my featured exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2014. Curated by Albeley Rodríguez. 

Bedtime Story 2014

  Muséo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela.Immersive installation with fabric-room sculpture and single-channel video and sound. Dimensions variable.Photos: Livia Daza-Paris  

Bedtime Story

I asked my mother,

'When is my dad coming back?' She began to tell me about the conflict in some imagined land between good and evil and that my father was part of that struggle for justice, a good struggle. For a moment, she paused, and then quieter, hesitantly, she told me, 'Up in the mountains, by the woods, there was an ambush, and someone said that your father was killed… his body was left far from here, somewhere'. I wondered, 'Is his body as far as the far end of the world?

It was already dark when she told me this story, and the lights were off. I could not see her face or her eyes. Only the street lights shimmer through my bedroom's window. Did I hear her cry? 'Time to sleep now', mother said. 

And so, I found myself drifting into the night towards the place I imagined being at the world's far end. 


I was four years old. The body of my father was never returned to us. There was no funeral; tears not to be shed.