Ni De Aqui Carpetas
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Here and Home (2025)

Photography Installation

Top triangular photograph: 25 x 24 inches

Bottom pentagon photograph: 25 x 33 inches

Large photograph: 33 x 96 inches

Wooden support structure: 32 x 95 inches

Room: 88 x 126 inches

Materials: Photo matte paper, wood, and hay from the Central Valley

Here and Home (2025) is a photographic installation that challenges how viewers engage with photography, drawing from Ariella Azoulay’s Civil Contract of Photography and the concept of "image fatigue." By transforming an 8-foot print into a layered, immersive experience, I physically deconstructed the image to alter perception. Taken in a field in Merced, CA, the photograph features a striking blue structure that symbolizes the feeling of returning home, only to leave again for the unfamiliar city. To create a sense of space and distance, I cut triangular and pentagonal fragments of the Central Valley mountains from the image and arranged them on the wall, mirroring my own detachment from home.

 

The wooden frame, resembling San Francisco’s architecture, reinforces the tension between these two worlds the vast openness of the Central Valley and the rigid structures of urban life. This installation is deeply personal, reflecting my longing for a place where I feel seen and understood, while highlighting the isolation I experience in the city. By incorporating hay from the original site into the space, I bring a tangible piece of home into the gallery, making the Central Valley present even within an unfamiliar environment.

 

Through this artwork, I explore distance beyond physical separation, delving into emotion, identity, and belonging, and inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences of place and displacement.

ARTWORKS FROM THIS INSTALLATION

LENGUAS

DELICADA

LO QUE UNA VEZ FUE DELICADO SE CONVIERTE EN SÓLIDO

SOLO VENTANAS

CORAZÓN DE NOPAL

CACTI

IZQUIERDA

Delicada

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 past relationship, betrayal, sexism, comparison, questions about my cultural identity, 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. 

 

I approached this installation much like I approach filmmaking. Coming from a cinema background, I think of this body of work as a film. There are characters, textures, color palettes, compositions, objects, symbols, and a soundtrack. 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, architectural forms, and the color pink become characters within this emotional landscape. Pink is deeply connected to the visual landscape of Mexico, its architecture, cars, clothing, and everyday environments, but it has also become a color which I identify myself with in my artwork. I wanted the color to be "too much", because I've been told that I am too much. Instead of letting that hurt me, I do it purposefully in this work. It's a color so obvious that you can't help but see it, its presence. 

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Returning to Mexico allowed me the opportunity to reclaim my narrative and to reconnect with materials, soil, thorns, textures, colors that connected to my 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, ugly, but also beautiful. It's a self reflection of not being perfect, but being honest. I have expereinced many ugly things, but I have also experienced many beautiful things. 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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