when home won’t let you stay, siempre te cargó conmigo

when home won’t let you stay, siempre te cargó conmigo is a four-wall immersive installation structure that delves into the question ‘what is home?’ As an immigrant, home exists as a feeling of belonging. We move across continents, cities, boroughs chasing that feeling of belonging. What is it to make a home? To be a home? To search for home? This work functions both as an exploration of the ephemerality that comes with ‘home’ in the face of immigration. I consider how home can be physical and ephemeral, metaphorical and embodied. Through this body of work I’m exploring the deep complexities of my personal history of immigration tied with colonial histories, memories, intergenerational trauma, and most of all belonging. The foundations of this home are rooted in the Bogotá and Quito landscape-traces of my homes growing up, wood carvings of my family's faces, embroidery charting the life cycle of native flora and crops as well as rooted indigenous knowledge, and abstractions of plant matter. I weave my language through printmaking, painting, layering, and memory to create a body of work that exists as a journey of processing and accessing memory as we search for the ephemerality that is making and being home.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Wood, acrylic, pigments, pigment sticks, embroidery, collage, organza, textiles, acrylic inks, oil, oil pastels, canvas, cotton, archival photographs, linoprints, woodcut, memory.

Installation, 2024