¿Cómo te sientes? / How Do you feel?

Individual Artist Grant awarded by Arts mid Hudson, june 2024

For this project I will be creating one large acrylic triptych titled, Los Canales (The Canals), two large watercolors titled, Carro en llamas (Car on Fire) and La niña muerta (The Dead Girl), and two large colored pencil drawings titled, El Techo (The Roof) and La Siesta (The Nap). The series of works will be created live on my Twitch channel in my home studio culminating with a virtual presentation of the work with a following Q&A.

The triptych, Los Canales, will depict in its outer panels the traumatic event where my father found his two deceased brothers in a canal. The center painting will confront notions of Mexican self erasure within my family, as it will depict a hidden painting my grandmother made about the Aztec love story of Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatepetl. Growing up under the abusive leadership of my father and within the Catholic church, the triptych is the ideal format for this subject matter.

Carro en llamas and La Niña Muerta, are a duet. They each feature vulnerable narratives surrounding different car accidents that each of my parents stumbled upon. For my father, finding a car on fire with a hope to save its passengers. For my mother, cradling a little girl as she took her last breaths. I’ve chosen water color for these works as the medium will best communicate the delicacy of these narratives.

El Techo and La Siesta, are both an inquiry into how I may have attempted to co-regulate my body prior to knowing I was autistic. Co-regulation is commonly understood as a practice where an adult will model calming behaviors for a child who is emotionally struggling, with the goal of teaching the child to self-regulate. Not having these behaviors modeled for myself, I am investigating how previous impulses, specifically in terms of sexual relationship, may have been an attempt to co-regulate. I’ll be making these works in colored pencil because it is an intimate medium with potential for deep gradients that will enhance the work’s emotive qualities.

As a witness and participant of the events in my work, I wonder, have we allowed our lives to be changed by grief? We move around our locations, people, and objects in an attempt to turn away from moments of sadness, but what can we gather about ourselves if we decide to understand how we feel?

Watch this project live on Twitch Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 7 - 10pm EST.
Final presentation of this work TBD.