Ni De Aqui Carpetas
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Calladita Te Ves Más Bonita 

Photography

Calladita Te Ves Más Bonita (2023) features Jessica Ontiveros-Stamps, who performs a silent yet powerful response to a common and harmful saying often directed at women: “You look prettier when you're quiet.” Jessica models with a self-written poem, expressed in eyeliner across her face, voicing her frustration with this phrase and encouraging other women to speak up.

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In the first image, the words are written on her face as she remains silent, standing in front of a cactus, a powerful symbol in Mexican culture. Like the cactus, Jessica becomes a figure of resilience, the words on her skin representing thorns. In the second photograph, she begins to wipe the words from her throat, symbolically shedding those thorns, unafraid and unapologetic. By the third image, she wipes the words from her mouth while staring directly at the viewer or perhaps at the person who once silenced her reclaiming her voice. This act of defiance transforms the narrative, asserting that her beauty lies not in silence, but in her strength to speak.

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Calladita Te Ves Más Bonita

by Jessica Ontiveros - Stamps​

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Calladita te ves más bonita...

¡No! ¡Calladita no te hace ver más bonita!

Don't let them silence you hermanita!

Eres hermosa when you speak up...

lo sientes in your throat that lump...

your words, tus sueños, tus derechos... 

you are not some forgotten echos! 

Eres guapa... when you obedient. 

¡No! It's time to be deviant! 

Quieres ser bonita? 

Don't whisper tus problemas amiga - ¡GRITA! 

If calladita te ves más bonita, 

then I will be happily ugly.

Pero mas importante...

I am unapologetic, powerful, capable, 

independent, valiente, fuerte...

If I stay pretty being quiet,

estoy más feliz fellita. 

Porque calladita no te ves más bonita.

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ARTWORKS FROM THIS INSTALLATION

LENGUAS

DELICADA

LO QUE UNA VEZ FUE DELICADO SE CONVIERTE EN SÓLIDO

SOLO VENTANAS

CORAZÓN DE NOPAL

CACTI

IZQUIERDA

ME QUIERES MUCHO, NO ME QUIERES NADA

Me Quieres Mucho, No Me Quieres Nada (2026) is an installation I constructed during my month-long residency at Casa Lü in Mexico City. The work is an abstracted self-portrait built from the emotional residue of the last several years, my experiences within a toxic relationship, betrayal, encounters with men and women in positions of authority, questions of cultural identity and belonging, and the complicated feeling of being loved by people who no longer seemed to like, understand, or accept me.

 

I was thinking about what it means to be “liked, but not liked”: to once feel wanted by the people I loved and then experience rejection, comparison, criticism, or dismissal from those same people. The installation became a space where I could finally confront what I had been too busy to grieve while completing my MFA and navigating everything happening around me. Influenced by female rage songs and women speaking openly about their experiences, I approached the installation much like I approach filmmaking. Coming from a cinema background, I think of a body of work as a film: there are characters, color palettes, compositions, objects, symbols, and a soundtrack. Music by artists such as Japanese Breakfast, Te Vi En Un Planetario, Margaritas Podridas, and Faouzia helped shape the emotional atmosphere of the work. The installation is accompanied by a five-minute poem that must be listened to while moving through the space, making the viewer not simply an observer, but part of the narrative and a forced listener to this specific story. 

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Every element carries a piece of the story. The cacti, thorns, tongues, lace, windows, and architectural forms become characters within this emotional landscape, while the pink that consumes the installation operates as both a visual language and an act of defiance. Pink is deeply connected to the visual landscape of Mexico, its architecture, cars, clothing, and everyday environments, but it has also become personal to me. After being told during my MFA that I should NOT make a pink show and, more broadly, that I should tone myself down, be softer, or make myself more palatable, embracing excess became its own form of rebellion. Here, pink is unapologetic. It IS too much because I was told I was too much. The work is filled with small “easter eggs”...the cactus shaped like a raised middle finger, a tongue referencing my former partner, and other details that may reveal themselves differently to each viewer.

 

Returning to Mexico allowed me to reconnect with materials, soil, thorns, architecture, color, and structures that feel deeply connected to my history and identity. Working with these materials became unexpectedly therapeutic. I could experiment, make mistakes, be excessive, be angry, be tender, and, most importantly, make whatever I wanted, which is a very normal part of expressing oneself in a healthy and artistic way. Me Quieres Mucho, No Me Quieres Nada is stubborn, vulnerable, angry, playful, and deeply personal. It is a space where I allow myself to remember what happened, grieve what I lost, and confront what still hurts. I heal through making art; I take what I cannot always say and give it a physical form. Although this installation comes from my own experiences, I hope that its emotional honesty creates a space for others to recognize something of themselves. To feel heard, to feel seen, to confront their own pain, and perhaps to begin healing.

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