My work is about process. Constructing by layers, adding, removing and adding again: nothing is permanent. The layers collide, dissolve, find each other and take their own ways. Moving away from the quick aesthetic of the un-touched, I give time and importance to each process, treasuring craft as a cultural heritage and social necessity of our time.
Portals, head containers and spaces of void are guided by a strong connection with the unconscious. Driven by the leading force of intuition, I play games; trick the mind, generating a territory for the unexpected. Memory, loss, decay and metamorphosis are subjects that surround the work, indirectly but surely referenced by Latin-American socio-political issues.
I construct sculptures, sometimes figures and sometimes fragments that contain space and create shelters. Sometimes my body engages with the material and creates helmets, floors and suits for itself.
With words the objects are grounded. Through poetry I engage with sound and rhythm, and through words I find my own sounds. The poems function as sound-scores. Often they become explorations of tongue, mouth and ways of structuring thought through speech. Staying out of breath, needing to scream or gurgle or spit, reflect the frustration and boundaries of language.
In my time-based work, such as video and performance, I deal with ideas of nesting, protection, and the encounter with the self. Waiting for the natural cycles, the eminent decays and the becoming of something new, are concepts that permeate the videos.
My environment defines a good part of my work: material. In the Mexican summer I play with sand and the wind of the shore. During the Chicagoan autumn, dry leaves become my leading surface. I construct kites with crust of a palm tree when I’m in my beautiful Borinquen. In winter I return to the naked branches and found cardboard boxes. For drawing, writing, collage, sculpture and performance, I prefer to find, use and degrade, rather than buy, carry and conserve. I like the life of the work to be variable; the materials have their own experiences and carry their own history. The cardboard, paper, soil are alive and in constant change.
The work is vertical; it can travel from the lightweight of air, drop to the earth and reach the underground. The installations exist under this verticality, molded by weight and contrast of materiality. All of the pieces, physical and ephemeral, relate to each other without hierarchy. They talk with and enrich one another. The process of making opens a door to question and understanding of transition: the limbo between something ending and becoming something else. The fragile and ephemeral moments of in-betweeness.
