As a U.S. American–born woman of Mexican ancestry, I embrace my Indigenous roots and Chicana identity. My work emerges from the tension and possibility of living between cultures—between the Mexico my grandparents left and the United States where my parents were raised. This in-between space, what Gloria Anzaldúa calls Nepantla, is where I have always existed and where my practice begins. It is a landscape shaped by displacement and belonging, loss and re-imagination, severed histories and the urgent desire to reconnect.

My art investigates a fractured connection to ancestry, cultural traditions, and family history. I explore how colonization, assimilation, and migration alter identity, and how individuals and communities labor to rebuild what has been lost. Themes of gender, ethnicity, class, nationalism, and power guide my work as I consider how culture is preserved, reshaped, and carried across borders—both literal and symbolic.

Working across painting, fiber art, installation, video, sound, and performance, I rely on an interdisciplinary approach grounded in material meaning. I juxtapose soft and ephemeral elements—fabric, thread, cornhusks—with narratives linked to the U.S.–Mexico border, including labor, familial separation, and migration. I weave flags to visualize the layered, often contradictory nature of bicultural belonging, and I record community voices to honor the endurance and diversity of those whose stories are frequently erased.

My use of mixed media, archival imagery, textiles, and sound investigates what is lost through erasure and what can be reclaimed through remembrance. I am interested in how ritual, labor, storytelling, and collective participation become acts of rooting—ways of asserting presence and creating belonging within systems that have long positioned us as outsiders.

Much of my work contemplates the contributions of Black and brown families whose physical labor has shaped the economies and cultural landscapes of the United States. Their work—past and present—remains underrecognized, despite being foundational to this country’s success. My practice functions as both social justice activism and ritual, an ancestral and maternal act of remembrance, reverence, and protection. Through these gestures, I seek to raise awareness for human rights while honoring the everyday resilience of marginalized communities.