Remembering and Feeling the Nation: Circulations of Emotions of the Imagined Community in the Contemporary Venezuelan Diaspora

In the last five years Venezuela registered its first massive migration due to economic and sociopolitical circumstances. In this context, I explore visual discourses in which diasporic subjects imagine a modern nation through circulations of emotions and memories on Instagram. The Chromatic Environment, a piece by Carlos Cruz-Díez located at the Simón Bolívar International Airport, along with natural landscapes and circulations of commodities, become the evocative referents for Venezuelan diasporic subjects to claim their sense of belonging. A visual analysis of images reveals how Venezuelan migrants circulate their longing for recuperating and restoring icons, symbols, and consumption practices as they connect with their personal experiences and craft an ideal past and future. Emotions concerning time and space play a significant role in how diasporic subjects represent their relations to the nation at the moment of departure and when they settle in a new country