ART

Artist Statement
Art, identity, and mental health are central to my work as a interdisciplinary Chicana feminist artist. Living and working in San Antonio, Texas; my work looks at the colonized history of racialized ethnic groups living within the United States popular imaginary. With that said, I’m interested in performativity and what the body’s affective response looks like through art: self-portraiture, wearable sculptures, painting, photography, and mixed media collage.

portfolio

Chicana Feelings

An ongoing autoethnographic project, CHICANA FEELINGS works to represent a Chicana experience in San Antonio, Texas by aiming to articulate a self-reflexive artistic conversation to actualize a tactile reality of Mestiza Consciousness. A response to what has been rejected and embraced, it is the process of resolving conflict and loss in the context of mental health. I am guided by questions framed to understand the ways that art, identity, and healing expand our notions about relationships to Self, and the sociocultural world. How do artists enact agency to understand the conditions of themselves? How does oppression operate against the body? And how does this translate through art? This exhibition involves interdisciplinary research, prose, and visual art to articulate - Art as an Embodied Practice: Artistic Expression, Conocimiento, and Identity Formation; my graduate thesis which works to Identify ways of understanding intersectional identity. By exploring these relationships, this exhibition makes meaning of survival with self-portraiture, paintings, video, and installation as it engages dialogue between anonymity and preservation. CHICANA FEELINGS is supported in part by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture, and Southwest Airlines through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts.

Attacks on Our Environment or When We Imitate Those We Fear as a Path to Survival, 2017. Acrylic on Canvas. 72” x 58”.

If I Were a Plant, I’d Feel Pain or When Your Defense Mechanism Is Rooted in Isolation, 2017. Acrylic on Canvas. 72” x 58”.

Video Still. I Fight With It. 41 Sec. 2017.

Installation View. Chicana Feelings, 2017. Embroidery thread, found fabric, ivy & aloe vera plants. 36” x 50”.

Remedies for re(membering)

Remedies for Re(membering) reflects where I find myself today.I take control of self-representation.My hand covers the eyes of the human skull on Coatlicue’s belt because sometimes we resist new knowledges of insight into our trauma and colonization. The deconstructed frames represent boundaries challenged. My mother wears a crown made up of the Teatro Nacional to nostalgically speak of social spaces that provided cultural connections to our history and culture. These retablo-like collages embody an emotional connection to what has been lost and found. My hands cover the breasts of Coatlicue because we are taught to be ashamed of our sexuality. It is both a colonial contestation and a decolonial representation of what I have rejected and embraced; reflecting a journey to resolve conflict and loss while understanding self-identity; combined with the knowledge of Mexican-American culture, Indigenous practices of Mesoamerica, and historical traumas of the South Texas borderlands, I present a re(imaged) sense of self. A tactile representation using imagery, texture, found objects, and family photos; I am inspired by Mexican Baroque and rasquache aesthetics and I am inspired by those stories that I do not know yet. My hand covers the mouth of Tonanztin because our indigenous traditions are silenced.Women are adorned with a nimbus-like Coyolxauhqui as a symbol of finding oneself; while Coatlicue, an Aztec earth goddess,is a spiritual reminder to increase consciousness of soul when one is on the path to overcoming trauma. These collaged digital prints are filled with plants - Nopales, Maguey, Hibiscus, and Tulips to represent my mother and comadres and their outdoor spaces of medicinal knowledge and connection to the land, the seasons, the wind, and the sun. With Remedies for Re(membering), I question what has been buried through the world’s tragedies to unearth the knowledge to shape a re(imagined) evolving sense of self. This becomes a space where I can assert my self-identity without waiting for approval or an invitation. These cultural deities of the earth and home –my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother, Coyolxauhqui, Coatlicue, Tonantzin, and la Virgin de Guadalupe; intertwined with a narrative of violence and heartache documents a self-healing process and my ways of relearning my heritage, my history, and accepting the aspects of myself that I’ve denied for so long. As I revisit memories to reclaim the strength that the matriarchs in my life have taught me,I’ve become softer with myself and in some ways, this work has healed me so that i can move forward to other lessons and insights of embodied knowledge - a form of revisionist history; challenging presumptions, while revisiting points of vulnerability.

Installation View. Remedies for Re(membering). 168" x 84". A Woman's Place Is... 2017.

Remedies for Re(membering) Series. C-print. 24" x 36". 2016-2017.

Hand Embroidery Work

Tyrant Be Gone. 4" x 5". 2017.

Embroidered Prayers - Betsy DeVos. 4" x 5". Red thread on photo transfer, fabric. 2018.

Embroidered Tears. Found dress, red cotton thread, gold plated hanger, brass with marble hook. 2018.

Detail. Tyrant Be Gone. 4" x 5". 2017.

Embroidered Prayers - Scott Pruitt. 4" x 5". Red thread on photo transfer, fabric. 2018.

I Will Not Assist Your Economy With My Children. Acrylic, thread, foam. 30" x 40". 2012.

Acrylic. 24" x 36". 2012.

Fiber Wall Hangings

Self-Portrait. 24" x 36". 2013.

Bodies As Statements. Fiber, spray paint, silk flowers, paper, tape, foam, wire. 60” x 60”. 2013.

Feminine/Masculine Identities. C-print. 24” x 36”. 2013