Ancestral Re/visions

Digital drawing, 2019

Notes on visual dialogues with the Banisteriosis Caapi plant. Many of these dialogues featured symbolic presences such as the underground world, the Amazon, smokes, meetings, and black and red ink. Part of “Picking out images from my soul’s eye”, Understanding Gloria E. Anzaldúa through Artistic Practices.

The Remaking of Being

The Remaking of Beings, 2015

Digital drawing, variable dimensions.

The Nahuatl that first domesticated the turkey called it "big monster" or Huexolotl, a name that survives in Mexico as Guajolote. The concept of monstrosity did not carry the connotation that is attributed to it nowadays. In fact it makes reference to what is not ordinary, and in that way functions as an evidence of the divine. The Mexica related him to the God Tezcatlipoca and the deities of the sun and life. For the Otomíes, the turkey is a sacred animal that is related to the creation of agricultural activity. Jóconi is how the female turkey is called, and dáma-'gni, is the male turkey. In North America, the Apache and Hopi associated the turkey with healing and agricultural practices, as a "giver of life" and participant in the creation of the Earth. The bird was known under many different names for different nations and communities.

The turkey has also being made synonym with Thanksgiving, a celebration of the installation of settler colonialism in the United States. And in many other countries it is also synonym with Christmas. Turkeys were one of the first birds to be taken to Europe and keep in their name changes, a tracking of the routes through which the turkey was commerced in the old world. The bird is known as Dinde "Of India" in French, Indjushka " bird of India" in Russian, Indyk “India" in Polish, Hindi in Turkish and Hindi diiq "Indian Rooster" in Arabic. They are thought to have been taken to Turkey where it was selectively crossed to increase its size. 

Short Stories on Europe

Digital drawings, 2012-2013.

The migratory control system of the European Union is characterized for the increasing number of deaths under the supervision of the Member States, the collection of evidence that at least 20,000 people have died on the borders of the EU, people who are being locked up in detention centers without having committed any crime, and a considerable number of security companies that are benefiting from this criminalization, companies whose research projects are being funded through the Council of Europe with the taxes of EU citizens and non-EU citizens alike.
The involvement of different parts of society, including the art world, such as architects that use their artistic and creative energy to validate supposed improvements of the circumstances of detention. The media with their production of fear against the figure of the refugee, the passive social consensus that allows this to happen in the name of the protection of the welfare state. The persecution of refugees who activate themselves politically and who see their survival solidarity to other refugees turned into criminalization. And the people who advocate for these measures in the name of saving the European lifestyle and values.

Listen, borders

2012-2013

Visions of Gold

In reference to the Yanacocha gold mine in Peru, and the capitals and resources moving freely beyond borders. 2013.

Center and periphery

Project in public space develop in the frame of City Festwochen. Covering two walls with digital illustrations as windows into other peripheric realities. Additionally small handwritten texts alluding to borders and migration where written on the wall to be read by passersby. Hohermarkt Square, 2011.

Recreation

a. Imprinted fantasies CMYK. b. The Talk. c. Ways of land scape. Digital drawings. 2007-2009

"Vacations as a break from productivity, the isolation of one's body or mind from the capitalist production system. During episodes of recreation an individual retires from its "productive" role and becomes a consumer of time dedicated to relax. Regardless as its name anticipates one recreates the necessity for a planned time expenditure and the achievement of specific means towards fun. Individuals may end up engaging in acts of risk and consumption of foreign exoticism while recreating the hegemonic narrative of pleasure as been achievable only through consumerism."

This is a work that translates how I lived the year I arrived in Austria, working largely unpaid as a designer and carrying the jargon of sociology studies. I had never traveled on vacations at home, nor did I know of anyone who stopped working to go on a trip, and thus the idea of vacations as it was lived in Austria impacted me. But also in connection with the desertion of all I knew, the loneliness, the differences in ways of caring, expecting, and communicating, the architectural language of modern desolate buildings in the city, and the absurdity of the migratory control system I was only starting to face.