About
|
I am an artist and storyteller across media. In 2023, Brooklyn Magazine named me one of Brooklyn's Top 50 Most Fascinating People, so that's cool. Here's a list of stuff you might want:
• 2024 calendar • CV • Press • Press bios • Bibliography/citations (nerd) • Shop • Client work • Contact |
Artist Statement (if you're into that kind of thing)
My work in literature, film, performance, and the visual arts plays with notions of power, memory, identity, belonging, and truth-making. These interests are all inextricably tied to my desire for social change. Using fiction, parafiction, and non-fiction, I explore possibilities in contemporary, historical, and future societies and imaginations. With an expansive and de-colonizing approach to art, I create and co-create stories. These stories consider the intersections between the literary, visual, and performing arts, as well as journalism and history. Therefore, my multidisciplinary practice, while rooted in writing and narrative, spans books, films, performances, images, objects, and cyber experiments—basically whatever I want. My style, which has been described as both poetic and playful, emerges regardless of the medium. Tension fascinates me: low-brow vs. high-brow, handmade vs. computer-made, real vs. unreal, minimalist vs. maximalist, public vs. private. The familiar can be rendered universal. Specificity can be mythical. In one way or another, the narratives I write, depict, capture, and perform center on the magic of choosing humor and vulnerability amidst tension.
My projects typically involve gender, race, migration, folklore, the environment, technology, and disability. Common themes include fantasy as a coping mechanism, the absurdity of dysfunctional societal systems, nature's cycles and adaptability, and truth-making as a process. Recurring interests include: my experiences as the child of an immigrant and a journalist; the historical concepts of girlhood and womanhood; latinidad and diaspora as a spectrum; the connections between immigration and gentrification; the impact of colonialism; growing up as "the other" in the South; the politics of archives and libraries; survivor's guilt and religious guilt as a cultural inheritance; and the civil wars in the United States and El Salvador. I've been known to combine expressive, confessional, charming, surreal, and crude approaches to my creations. Again—I am a ho for tension.
My projects typically involve gender, race, migration, folklore, the environment, technology, and disability. Common themes include fantasy as a coping mechanism, the absurdity of dysfunctional societal systems, nature's cycles and adaptability, and truth-making as a process. Recurring interests include: my experiences as the child of an immigrant and a journalist; the historical concepts of girlhood and womanhood; latinidad and diaspora as a spectrum; the connections between immigration and gentrification; the impact of colonialism; growing up as "the other" in the South; the politics of archives and libraries; survivor's guilt and religious guilt as a cultural inheritance; and the civil wars in the United States and El Salvador. I've been known to combine expressive, confessional, charming, surreal, and crude approaches to my creations. Again—I am a ho for tension.
Want to find out how I do what I do? Here are some of my patrons, sponsors, supporters, and collaborators.