Statement

I craft sculptural series that consider the formal and conceptual spaciousness of containers as a category of object and field of experimentation. Trained in experimental theatre and performance, I learned to trust my body's impulses and sensory perceptions as part of the creative process. This background informs my deep commitment to craft and how its many histories center the transmission of embodied knowledge.

As a first-generation queer Latine artist my practice is a form of gathering across time, space, and difference within a polarized contemporary context that continues to reproduce colonial systems of separation, exclusion, and harm. My handmade queer containers expand traditional forms and extend function beyond utility through the use of experimental materials like mylar emergency blankets, plastic rattan, and craft lacing: materials embedded in complex relationships between nature and culture.

The work often reflects and refracts light, ideas, associations, and resonances. Shimmer, Roland Barthes suggests, is a perceptual quality that undermines binary thinking through its mutability and ongoing play of differentiation. The Mayan concept of lem is associated with mirrors, gems, and lightning, phenomena that connect the terrestrial and the celestial in its mutable flicker. Similarly, the Yolngu concept of bir’yun is an immersive experience of connection with the animacy of all things at all times. Experiencing shimmer in its fullness requires the letting go of linear thought, stable categories, and progressive time - hallmarks of colonial-capitalist consciousness.

My improvisationally made sculptures shimmer between personal and shared experience, contemplative speculation, and celebratory vibrancy. The basketry and netting techniques I use produce shape-shifting wall, floor, and free-standing sculptures that shimmer referentially between vessels, masks, portals, mirrors, webs, and relics - threshold objects that transport the imagination and transform perception. They also transmute industrial materials connected to accelerated consumption into alluring containers that encourage us to hold differently. They invite the viewer to re-encounter and reconsider the humble container’s generous form, inclusive logic, and unlimited potential as a carrier of meanings, identities, shared histories, and communal futures.