Portfolio Statement 

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When I decided to create prints I began thinking about what was important to me. Home is one of those main things, I stumbled into the question of what does home look like? and of course, it came with more questions than answers. What does home feel like? What does home mean to an immigrant? Is home an idea? a physical place? a person?

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The words "lack of" was a common subject I heard growing up in the rural town of Acumbaro Michoacan where I grew up. While there was an absence of income, opportunity, and education there was also an abundance of culture, family values, and nature so this is one place I call home.

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In this portfolio, I focus on those questions starting with re-visiting memories and experiences of growing up in a place where we lived directly from the land, remembering as much as possible and thinking about the responsibilities that come with growing up on a farm and how that has changed me as a person, as well as re-teaching me about the value of life.

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At least in Mexico, when I played alone, I was never lonely. I relied on nature for peace, comfort and it fillfilled my life. Its abundance and ability to colonize and transform a space is something that still amazes me. I explored and observed the great outdoors as much as I could. I enjoyed observing the transcendent beauty of nature in each and every animal and plant I interacted with. Nature taught me that life was fragile, temporary and that we must nurture it.

 

Re-visiting those memories made me appreciate my childhood more It also reminded me of how beautiful the passage of time is and how nostalgia is always in some memories. It made me appreciate the temporary things in life, because, at the end of the day, we are also temporary. Sadly thinking about childhood made me realize how fast things end. At some point, we had to grow up. All of a sudden the place we called home could not suit our economic needs, immigration was the future my hometown trained us for.

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With displacement came feelings of homesickness and how destructive isolation feels sometimes. The need for reconnecting with familiar faces, objects, and trying to understand the difference between being lonely and being completely alone. I realized there are those tendencies of surrounding ourselves with familiar things which may seem like we are carrying our culture with us wherever we go. Being alone and being lonely in Mexico and in the U.S are two different things.

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Dreams have always been the inspiration to my work because of its chaotic nature, it reminds me of how you remember memories. The purpose of this portfolio was to allow myself and others to visualize places that do not exist anymore only in fragmented memories, deep down within our consciousness. I am also here to tell you that these are the places that define who we are and that our narratives become our identities, you will be remembered by the stories you tell, our place of birth is part of our identity and for some us, that ache of missing home is what makes us immigrants.