ARTIST STATEMENT
I seek to push the medium of drawing beyond its typical boundaries. My approach consists of exploring the interstices that occur in the encounter of different media between the still and moving image: drawing, space and the kinetic. A drawing on paper can become a three-dimensional object occupying space or it can take on another meaning in relation to a video projected on its surface.
Thematically, this relates to my ongoing interests in issues of borderlines, identities and displacement -origin, memory and transformation. My upbringing in both Mexico and the United States and the rich heritage from Mesoamerican cultures and present day indigenous communities in Mexico strongly influence my approach to image making.
I am drawn to questions of how historical processes, modern forms of colonialism and political events affect and challenge our personal and cultural identities What happens when one leaves a place of origin and crosses a border into unknown territory? There is a geographical as well as a psychological displacement that occurs.
I am also inspired by certain philosophical and mystical notions in Pre-Columbian cultures such as the notion that, “all existence is in a constant state of change”
My work is embued then with concern for the interior and exterior forces of existence. With the quest for inner fulfillment, belonging and identity and the concern and reaction to the exterior events that affect our individual and collective selves.
I deal with these themes by creating images renedered in multiple layers of charcoal or graphite, often based on photographic references. I apply different forms of collage by sewing scraps of paper onto the surface with other images, leaving rough edges or torn, open spaces. I slash, puncture, sew or pull areas of the paper, disrupting its flat surface. String dangles on the surface as floating lines in space, and new forms emerge that jut out into space away from the two-dimensional boundary. A duality of forces and multiple borders emerge from the tension and transfiguration of the surface.