Using video, photography, found objects, and textiles, I create installations that layer my personal experiences with American history and popular culture. Navigating the fine line between playful and critical, my work explores the intersections of immigration, family, gender identity, and sexuality. Within my work, I dissect iconic materials and archives to critique mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric and subvert the appropriation of Latinx culture. I rearrange personal and found video footage, TikTok songs, thrifted souvenirs, and San Marcos-inspired blankets to create physical gaps where new meanings can be interpreted and carve out spaces where hybrid identities can exist and thrive. Using rasquache sensibilities, I distort ideas of patriotism and nationalism, revealing the hollow promises that lie beneath them. Through my multimedia practice I have developed my own hybrid language to visualize my family's migration from Guatemala through the US-Mexico border to Washington DC and the shores of New England.
My video and photography work combine analog photography with green screens, 360 cameras, and drones to create non-linear narratives that reference viral political and pop-culture moments and critique the way online audiences consistently create, consume, and virtue signal during times of crisis. I play the role of multiple characters within my videos–e.g. Border Becky and Koncious Kyle–as a method of self-examination, seeking to encourage a deeper understanding of my own actions and their impact within my communities.
I use dye sublimation printing to transfer my imagery onto fleece blankets and then combine them with found polyester blankets .The pictographic fleece blankets are inspired by San Marcos Blankets that were first manufactured in Central America and bear images of pop culture icons, homeland heroes, and picturesque landscapes. These blankets are passed down through generations, traveling across geographic and cultural borders, and are emblematic of the immigrant experience. My soft sculptures and assemblages replicate the atmosphere of informal marketplaces found near the border including parking lots, roadsides, and swap meets. The mixed media installations mimic being wrapped up in fuzzy warm blankets, doom scrolling through images of the silly and banal next to images of violence, racism and war. This convergence serves as a poignant representation of American experiences of privilege and confusion.