Flowers For the Living - 2022, Latino Cultural Center, Dallas, TX, 2024.
Excerpt from the Exhibition:
Currently in my practice, I explore the ideas of security and comfort with found textiles. Large, thick, soft and colorful, these cobijas or blankets in Spanish, are usually found in predominately Mexican-American or latinx households. From religious iconography to lounging animals, they can be found with a multitude of design depictions on them. Moreso, many of the designs that adorn the blankets depict varying types of flowers in all colors. The goal of this exhibition is to use these specific flowers from the various cobijas blankets and offer them in an installation where the focus is on healing.
During the year 2022, there were 647 victims of gun violence from mass shootings in the United States (per gunviolencearchive). The second highest number in the past 7 years alone. I mention this for two reasons. Firstly, because that is the most recent data available from a full year and secondly because I myself, during that same year, became a recent victim of a random act of gun violence. Just over two years ago, on July 15th 2022, I was shot twice in the abdomen while out for an evening run. Though senseless and random, I am lucky enough to have survived. This exhibition, is an offering to the families of the victims that were not as fortunate.
For this project, 647 flowers of differing size, shape and color would be cut out from these sourced cobija blankets, collaged and sewn together to create a large expansive almost infinite bouquet of flowers with each one representing a family of each victim. In effect, this boquet becomes dedicated to the families of those in the U.S. that have died from mass shootings during the year of 2022 alone. This work becomes a visual marker, a representation of the severity and the magnitude of this ongoing tragedy and the weight of the toll of just one year of mass shootings here in this country.
This projects aim is to give people the opportunity and a space in which healing is the focus. These soft, thick, weighted and inviting blankets offer healing and offer comfort. These flowers offered to the victims families will never die, they will never wilt, never loose their shape or color. They will always be around to help one heal, grieve and mourn. They offer warmth and security and comfort during times when it is needed most.
Structures of Softness, Oak Cliff Cultural Center, Dallas, TX, 2023.
Excerpt from the Exhibition:
My work has primarily always revolved around painting; however since the start of 2021 my most recent work has been focused solely on sculpture. This current exhibition is comprised of what I call Structures of Softness. Like any wall, these simple architectural elements are used to divide space, and as a result, people, environment, and sometimes even borders. However, instead of monolithic, seemingly unapproachable walls these works are instead large, tall walls of softness.
These structures of softness and color provide a sense of security, they offer warmth and they offer comfort. They offer these things in replacement of their opposites: Hard, cold structures used solely for division.
This wall piece is a response to a problem. This response goes contrary to what is currently being done all along the United States / Mexican border. It is using the same tool that is used for division (a border wall), and instead using it to unite, to comfort and to heal. These fence structures are a type of protest that in essence focuses on healing. Using an object like cobijas (blankets in english) a thing that is inherently healing and wrapping them around an object that is in need of comfort, in this case, a disliked, unloved border fortification.
Just as well, it is not only aiming to challenge the future function of a border wall but is also challenging the notion of what security means. Security not in its literal sense, but in what the material used provides us: warmth, care, comfort. It is taking a wall and reinterpreting its usage as a new positive form for the environment, culture and the people it divides.
Survival, Death and Home, Daisha Board Gallery, Dallas, TX, 2024.