Link, una historia de amor (Link, a love story), 2024

2 channel video installation 4k, color, sound, 9' and seven photo portraits.

“Cosplay is a fan’s expression of love for their favorite character,” Nobuyuki Takahashi.

This work is an audiovisual portrait of a subculture characterized by its reverence and imitation of fictional characters. Cosplay, a word formed from "costume" and "play," is a performative activity in which participants, also called cosplayers, dress up in clothing and accessories representing a specific character or idea. The love they feel for these characters and the possibility of embodying them is reflected in this video. Cosplayers design and create the costumes; they study the movements, gestures, and speech patterns of the characters they imitate. Their favorite sources of inspiration include comics, film, literature, anime, manga, and video games.

In this video, all the participants embody Link, the protagonist of the famous video game “The Legend of Zelda,” created by Shigeru Miyamoto and first presented by Nintendo in 1986. Link is a young hero living in the Kingdom of Hyrule, whose goal is to fight and defeat evil creatures to help Princess Zelda—he is the Hero Chosen by the Goddesses. In the video, we see how all the protagonists represent the same character, Link. The term "Link" means "connection"; the creator chose this name to symbolize Link as a “link” between the player and the universe of Zelda, that is, a bridge between the virtual and the real world. Additionally, in the latest video game, “Breath of the Wild,” Link was intentionally designed with an androgynous and “gender-neutral” appearance, so that both male and female players could more easily identify with the character.

Throughout the video, we see how all these Links speak about the life of this character in the first person, narrating his fears, battles, and aspirations, while we discover how this character hides a story of continuous learning as a spirit that is repeatedly reincarnated in different bodies to face new challenges indefinitely.