Old Project Description

"Yo soy Chicana.

   Working with photography to reexamine how images are read. Building an understanding of how iconography has influenced the social and natural landscapes I was raised in. As the daughter of undocumented parents, immigration policy is never far from my mind. And has forced me to recognize the disparities within class dynamics, language, and hegemony featured within the suburbs of the Midwest. In the image, A Space I can recognize and a Place I can't access (2020), I mourn all the missed memories with relatives I’ll never get to know, stuck in a different reality. Using a mixture of found objects and vernacular images from my family photo albums, I create dynamic scenes in both digital and analog formats using methods such as seriality, self-referential image-making, and titling to further activate these complex and theoretical ideas.

 At this point in time, agency and representation are still fought for in several marginalized communities. Historically, photography has aided in the dismantling of civilizations through visualizing non-western lifestyles and labeling them as inefficient and immoral. So how can a tool used to destroy lineages, amend those same ruptures? In my series "Productions of Chimera", I explore what it means to subscribe to a “post-colonial” method of making. Inspired by the works of theorists and authors like Gloria Anzaldua, Ariella Azoulay, and Achille Mbembe to name a few."

Free. Write:

trying to create images with a post colonial lens, influenced by the words of Achille Mbembe and Gloria Anzaldua. Often working through feeling of loneliness, I find comfort. in making sense of my being through my family's archive. These images make me feel hopeful I can create stories of my own. Often times i am quick to forget the events of my life. The glamorous moments are far and few between. 

i feel like i live inn a home that just tolerates each other

a space i can recognize and a place i can't access

This distinction in wording is major. space is vast, encompassing of everything around it, in a black hole void kind of way. Space is also impersonal, there is room for malleability, and once its reach a level of personalization it then becomes a place. Making an individual's relationship to space something that is co-created through identity. 

this image presents the narrator's desire for connection. Bringing forward evidence for other ways of being that appear fuller. Superimposing a sense of belonging if only they had access to this place.