Inspired by the internal migrations of the Dominican Republic—from the countryside to the city, from the interior to Santo Domingo—La Balsa also symbolizes transoceanic journeys, the movements of those seeking, in the city or abroad, a more dignified life. As if on a perpetual journey, these floating architectures condense the longings, memories, and precariousness of those who migrate with everything in tow: their homes, their voices, their faith, their wounds.

Constructed with fragments of marine design, the work reinterprets the act of migration as a form of vital recycling: bodies and dreams that are remade with what remains, that build a future on ruins. La Balsa has crossed mares, as migrants do, and its exhibition at the Point Art Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, as well as in Brooklyn, New York, transforms it into an ambassador of these invisible journeys.

This work raises urgent questions: what do we leave behind when we migrate? What do we take with us? Is it possible to put down roots on something that floats? In a world where displacement is the norm rather than the exception, La Balsa reminds us that every migrant house is an act of floating resistance.