At the core of my work is a poetic and emotional examination of the history of objects. I explore the value we assign to what we own from the places we come from and that which we keep through life’s journeys and crossroads. In my installations and paintings, there is an emphasis on the recurrence of objects telling evolving stories of resilience, and memory. I visually document things that may trigger and build up memory. I search for linkages of objects to places and emotions to convert them into storytellers in their own right.
I have been using the chair as my personal tool/star/instrument related to tradition and visual history; and one of the most public of signs, the heart, as the symbol to represent the intimate side of a communal activity as it is to feel, to remember and to interpret. I intend these icons to tell history and to remember it; precisely our basic need of emotional comfort, and our sense of loss and gain. It is a constant search, not of answers, but of certain satisfaction, and of an alleged reason of tradition when we believe to have one through the repetitions of patterns, which lead us to an apparently safe and happy history.
This is also a search for physical perpetuity, without counting with just our memories (and the subjective fact attached to that concept), and for the strength the material I choose to apply may suggest, in comparison with the vulnerability of our emotions. History, especially the one of the heart, tends to turn fantastic when held by dreaming souls and broken ones; and sometimes, even when it seems possible to express pain with tears and pleasures through smiles, they do not guaranteed the true interpretation of the feelings (if that would be possible) or the strength/weakness of emotions (those ones of first loves).
My chair has become the permanent tree where we could always lean; and the heart, the care taker (if the tree falls) of finding our innocence, of making up for any loss of memory and bringing back a sense of gain, love, emotional accomplishment and presence. It may also bring sadness and regrets, but it is said that pain does not have memory or may sometimes be delayed by some basic human urge of finding beauty first.
The presence of domestic objects, such as the chair, allows me to delve deeper into ancestral processes of survival, legacy, as well as dynamics between generations and places. The chair and text become instruments to relate to tradition, visual history as storytelling, remembrance, and commitment. I articulate the objects to recollect, preserve and reveal memory while reflecting on our basic need for emotional comfort. On canvas and in installations, my compositions emanate mappings of ancestry and personal history. They speak of human movements, migration, and constant evolution. They offer piles of stories to add to our present and create a chain of events, documentation, and intergenerational dynamics. They make us aware of the pockets of resilience among trauma and grief, and solidarity amid injustices. I may not change history, but I learn from it as the past of a present.
At the end (and from the beginning), everything depends on the "eye/heart of the beholder."