Seaweed Portals, 2022
Wool yarn, plywood, acrylic paint, canvas, 1 hour audio loop, multi-channel video projection 33 minutes: 35 seconds
Video Documentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0RJcA21TPM
Transgender Euphoria: Puerto Rico’s Queer Exaltation is a two-part installation that depicts the spiritual connection between the island of Puerto Rico and its Transgender inhabitants through the visualization of a multi-generational queer narrative. By abstracting Caribbean seascapes, parts of the Flamboyán tree, chest scars left behind by gender-affirming surgery and coquí frogs through an array of mediums, the ecology of Puerto Rico and the Trans body overlap and create a multi-sensory place wherein visitors may witness the euphoria of Transgender Puerto Ricans.
Flamboyán for Breakfast, 2022
Wool yarn, table, chairs, plywood seed pods, acrylic paint, canvas, 20-Minute audio loop of coqui frogs
Flamboyán for Breakfast is an installation that represents the story of my tía Aileen and I eating petals from the Puerto Rican Flamboyán tree, and the subsequent dreams we’ve had about our bodies alongside these types of trees. Viewers approach a wooden table and chairs, colorfully painted with abstractions of the Flamboyán’s petals as intuitive marks in conté crayon and acrylic paint. The Flamboyán’s long seed pods, replicated in woodcuts, are scattered on the table along with inscriptions of shapes reminiscent of my post-transition body. These same scar-pod shapes appear on murals that depict the image of my chest and are positioned on the walls behind the table and chairs. As viewers walk around the space, they hear ambient coqui frog audio. Hanging next to the breakfast scene is a chandelier made of long yarn ropes, each knitted to mimic the dense seaweed that my family and I often swam through during our oceanside stops.