Artist Statement

My altarpieces create a physical manifestation of my experience as a mixed Latina woman raised in American suburban culture. This series is made up of ceramic objects on wall-mounted altars made of wood panels adorned with wallpaper and paint. The surfaces utilize visual references and color schemes from 90s girls’ bedrooms and Mexican pop-culture. Ceramic bones and cacti mounted onto the altar forms are all made through molded ceramic processes, which for me hold a ritualistic resonance. The surfaces of the ceramic bones and cacti are glazed, painted, lustered, and gold leafed to reference a constellation of experiences in my mixed, Mexican American household. Through these works I centralize a need to hold on to parts of one’s histories, lineage, and traditions, but also to think critically about the impact those histories hold. For me this work is a process of looking at these ideas of my familial lineage, mestiza identity, my own body and how I was taught to view it in religious spaces, and the icons and religiosity so ingrained in my familial experience and culture. In this work I use conventions and mechanisms of the religious, the icon, and kitsch to both elevate and critique these ideas and communities I am working through and trying to be a part of.