Investigation, Unlearning & Confrontation
A large part of my practice directly focuses on…….
Self Decolonization
The story and ideals of colonization are insidiously ingrained and normalized in most Americans on a deeply subconscious level. As a Latinx person, I recognize that there are immense amounts of racism, colorism, and anti-Blackness within our own marginalized community that are in part a result of colonization of the Americas. After years of research and practice around decolonization and antiracism, reading buried histories of women, queers, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), revising academic pedagogy and curriculum, I was ready to sit down and reflect on the pain and trauma of my own lived experiences. In the spring of 2020, I began to reflect more deeply on my own complicity and internalized ideas of white supremacy and anti-Blackness and how to eradicate them. Self Decolonization is an installation that documents a performance of myself facing and removing a mask of my own internalized white supremacy. A mask that I hadn’t realized allowed me to “pass” in various aspects of my life and profit from anti-Blackness. Removing the mask is the beginning of the extensive, tedious, and painful self-reflective process of decolonization. Confronting internalized prejudice, bias, and colonial values is one necessary step in achieving true racial justice and equality.
2020
30/30+
For at least 30 minutes everyday, over the course of 30 days, she ran. Beginning from the same location, each day a new route was explored—north, east, south, west. The duration was dependent on her physical and mental strength that day, that moment. Unique hand-stitched maps plotted the daily journey and photographs documented her body’s reaction; sweat.
30/30+ investigates the body in both surface and function to scrutinize social perceptions of gender and femininity. Responding to the adage ‘a lady never breaks a sweat’ and the social stigma attached, the works serve as a quiet but firm confrontation to the male gaze. The series works to contest the antiquated notions of how women are presumed to be. Mixing a detached scientific approach with a quotidian and personal subject matter the works create subjective maps that examine emotions felt, places encountered, and experiences lived.
2012-2013
