who am I?

Discovering My Colors

An Essay by Camille Renée Devid

Introduction

Who am I?

When I close my eyes, I feel Dutch.
But I don’t have blue eyes or blond hair.
Surinamese blood runs through my veins,
But I don’t speak the language.
I know the national anthem of Curaçao by heart
I can sing it with my eyes closed
But I wasn’t born there.

So where do I belong?
Where do I come from?
And what do I feel?

These questions are at the heart of Discovering My Colors, a photographic and poetic journey into identity, memory, and belonging.

My goal with this work is to explore how complex identity really is. In a world shaped by migration, mixed cultures, and layered family stories, many of us don’t fit into just one box. And maybe we’re not meant to. Identity is not singular. It is multiple, emotional, historic, and deeply personal.

This project does not try to resolve that complexity, but to honor it. Through photography, self-portraiture, abstraction, family images, and poetry, I explore the visible and invisible layers that live inside me.

Part I — The Dance of the Ancient Souls

To understand myself, I first needed to listen,
Beyond the present, beyond my own voice.

This chapter opens with a poetic meditation on ancestral memory. I explore how the presence of those who came before me continues to live on, through emotion, intuition, dreams, and gestures.

The images in this part are layered, textured, ghostlike. They evoke spiritual echoes, traces of those I’ve never met but feel inside me. These ancestors whisper from the edges of my awareness.
Their paths, both known and unknown, echo in mine.
Their resilience lives in my bones.
Their silence moves through my work.

I invite these ancient souls into the frame, acknowledging that I am not separate from them, but an extension.
A continuation.

Part II — The Foundation: An Ode to My Mother and Father
Our parents are our first mirror, our first language, our first sense of belonging.

In this deeply personal chapter, I turn the camera toward my parents. During the final months of my mother’s life, I began photographing her using Polaroid film. These soft, fragile images now serve as a visual tribute to her strength, warmth, and unwavering love. She was born in Amsterdam, made Curaçao her home, and shaped me through her joy and presence.

My father, with Surinamese roots and a life in Amsterdam, carries a silent power. His devotion to my mother, especially in her final days, showed me what it means to love fully and to endure.

The contrast between these two visual portraits, soft pastel and warm for my mother, high-contrast and almost negative for my father, creates a visual dialogue.
It shows the duality of strength, care, masculinity, and vulnerability.

Through their lives and their love, I was shaped.
Their cultures, their sacrifices, their simplicity.
All became the soil in which I grew.

This chapter is an ode to them.
To everything they gave me.
To everything they were.

Woven in the Traces
In the shadow of the sun, a whisper,
Woven in the traces of yesterday.
Amsterdam winds, Curaçao beaches,
Surinamese roots, deeply engraved in the earth.

He, a silent sorrow, faithful to time,
She, a smile that gently faded.
Lives intertwined in waves of light,
From the rainforest to the sea, reborn in me.

I, a stream between worlds,
Unframed, baptized in their love.

Part III — Mapping the Invisible: Self-Portraits and DNA
In this final chapter, I look inward, toward the unspoken stories written on my skin.

After taking a DNA test, I discovered that I carry within me at least ten different origins. Each thread, woven together, forms the tapestry of who I am. Every region, every color, became more than a statistic,  it became a doorway into a deeper understanding of my identity.

I created a series of self-portraits where my body became a canvas. I painted my face with symbolic colors inspired by my DNA results.
These colors represent both biological heritage and emotional resonance. Yellow, blue, red, each tone carries weight and meaning, not just geography.

Alongside these portraits, I made abstract visual works that feel like traces: fingerprints, maps, layers of memory. These represent the unseen.
The parts of us that live in the body, but also in feeling, in imagination, in spirit.

There is a tension here, between the visible and the invisible, between scientific data and poetic expression.
And that contrast is intentional. Identity is not always what you can point to on a map. Sometimes it’s what moves beneath the surface.

This chapter is about claiming all of it, without simplifying it.

Artistic Intent

Through this work, I want to invite reflection.
Not just on where we come from,
But on how we carry it,
Feel it,
Transform it.

Many people today are shaped by multiple cultures, histories, and migrations. We don’t always speak the language of our ancestors.
We may feel connected to places we’ve never lived. We might belong in many spaces, or feel like we belong nowhere.

That doesn’t mean we are lost.
It means we are layered.
And those layers are powerful.

This project is an invitation to embrace the complexity. To see identity not as a fixed shape, but as a living process.
A movement between time, place, body, and emotion.

Conclusion — Who am I?

I am not one place, one language, one story.
I am Dutch, but not entirely.
I am Surinamese, but not completely.
Curaçao shaped my heart, it feels like home, but I wasn’t born there.

I am the space in between.
The child of many paths.
A living archive of love, migration, loss, and possibility.

I believe Discovering My Colors is not just a personal exploration, it is part of a bigger story. A reflection of how many people live and feel today. We are shaped by movement, by history, by emotion.
And we deserve the space to hold all of it.

Identity is not something to fix.
It is something to honor.