From birth, fabric cradles us—soft, worn, and imbued with care, a second skin that shields us from the world.
In my practice, I treat blankets and textiles as materials and vessels of memory carried across generations, borders, and homes. Their patterns are tactile maps of belonging. The vibrant threads stitch mythologies, holding a sense of cultural identity. These textiles, layered with the stories of my family, are the foundation upon which I create, remixing traditions shaped by migration to the United States and the collisions of heritage and modernity.
Family photographs anchor my sense of home. They archive memory while quietly shaping the ideologies passed between generations. My practice looks at the fraught relationship between photography and colonialism—a medium that has captured and categorized, shaping narratives of identity and power. By blending photography with found objects, printmaking, and performance, I create installations that speak to assimilation, desire, memory, and migration. My work is rooted in the tactile and the ephemeral, where patterns and textures echo the intimacy of touch.
In my series, ¿Qué dice tu corazón?, I subvert the conventions of portraiture through silhouettes, challenging both the colonial and heteronormative histories of the photographic medium. Through collaborations with my family, I construct highly staged images within my studio and childhood homes, arranging blankets and their patterns in mesmerizing. Photographic tools—C-stands, spring clamps—are left visible, exposing the mechanics of image-making, blurring the lines between authenticity and artifice. Instead of digital manipulation, I use mirrors behind the hand-cut silhouettes to shift perspectives, revealing the textiles draped just beyond the camera's gaze. A visual sleight, an illusionary trick. The deliberate rearrangement of textiles becomes a political act of spatial reconfiguration, queering the rigidly defined functions of domestic spaces. The textiles become architectural elements that transform rooms into fluid environments resistant to categorization; a site for play.
Across my work, I embrace excess, not as something to be tamed but as a mode of joyful resistance. These aesthetic choices assert the value of cultural expressions often dismissed as 'tacky' or excessive. I transform spaces into something alive—walls covered in bold, sprawling wallpaper, photographs nestled under the curves of my childhood blankets, and objects precariously balanced. These spaces disrupt the gallery's white walls with a splendor that captivates.
In exploring various forms of craft, I am drawn to the handmade and its power to connect past and present, personal and collective. These materials and methods allow me to examine how histories of care, survival, and migration shape identity, ultimately questioning how we continue to remake homes in ever-changing landscapes.