At a time of social contention, masked and open injustice, my main objective is to use my art to explore existing structures and systems that reflect the human condition in society. Formalized by notions of identity and culture, my practice often acts as a kind of experimental mirror, reflecting not only the circumstances in my own life, but also capturing a recognizable quirky and cosmopolitan vision of American Latino life. My on-going practice frequently attempts to identify parallels to others cultures, as an attempt to reflect on similarities and question the dividing associations people have within society. Pragmatically, the work is not created to codify culture or propagate its relevancy within art, but rather a sharing of experience that promotes relation between cultures and a discursive dialogue about societies upheld beliefs.
Fallen Nature and the Two Cities-Exhibit (Installation Shot)
My practice additionally examines the modernist idea of "universalism". Kara Walker, in a dialogue with curator Thelma Golden stated, "I got to thinking about the way black people represent ourselves in our art work and also about the ways I was avoiding that representation in my work, trying to find some universal, which, when I took a step back, I realized was Eurocentric, white-male identified". Artist Charles Gaines, in his essay The Theater of the Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism states,"Racism is in part the practice of excluding from political and social power those groups that have an ethnic identity different from that of the dominant race". For many artists, critics and theorists today, "universalism" is synonymous with Eurocentrism or Western imperialism, and as such is understood as always existing at the expense of particular people and cultures, which are absorbed into a homogeneity that ignores and ultimately eliminates their specificity.
As an artist, I question these "universal" inclinations not just as they relate to art, but how they shape our identities. Perhaps my largest contention lies in the rationale that identity is fixed- that somehow we can fall into a category that is not susceptible to change as we encounter various cultures. That being said, I have allowed my art to become a vehicle for the documentation of a different model- a model that includes the hybrid and the initial point of conversation.
