Research is a fundamental part of my practice, as is sourcing material on the street, in secondhand stores, and in lost-and-found bins. The starting point for me is always a found object or image that triggers a series of formal and conceptual connections. The time I spend looking for materials slows and shifts the act of acquisition, forcing constant adaptation, while also introducing accident and surprise into the process, and opening up exchanges with alternative economies. I cut up, reposition, extract details, and erase features of my source materials in order to build collages and installations.
The choice of collage as my primary medium is related to the fact that it is often considered a minor medium within the visual arts. I like its close connection to do-it-yourself crafts and the activities of hobbyists. This practice allows me to make small modifications and alterations in the meaning and use of the objects and images I choose.I am particularly interested in childhood because in this period the limits between reality and fiction are not yet defined. I intentionally work with material that carries implicit narratives around gender, sexuality, and class. Children’s stories and games are embedded with morals that indirectly teach social and behavioral norms. I seek to draw attention to these norms in order to render them uncanny. My intention with this strategy is to pause or interrupt the narrative, to introduce ambiguity in the face of supposed certainty.
Artist Statement
Research is a fundamental part of my practice, as is sourcing material on the street, in secondhand stores, and in lost-and-found bins. The starting point for me is always a found object or image that triggers a series of formal and conceptual connections. The time I spend looking for materials slows and shifts the act of acquisition, forcing constant adaptation, while also introducing accident and surprise into the process, and opening up exchanges with alternative economies. I cut up, reposition, extract details, and erase features of my source materials in order to build collages and installations.
Satanic Panic Series, 2021 (detail)
Satanic Panic Series 2021 Site-specific installation at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art Omniscient: Queer Documentation in an Image Culture
Recently, I started a new series called Satanic Panic. This series references the moral panic and collective hysteria that originated in the US in the 1980s, spreading through many parts of the world in the late 1990s, including to my home country of Chile.
What particularly interests me about this cultural phenomenon is that in many cases those accused of committing crimes were queer individuals or outsiders in some other form, many of whom were also caretakers for children. The collective hysteria surrounding these criminal accusations served as a camp expression of the culture in which we lived. As a queer, brown, South American immigrant living in the US and working in the field of early childhood education, I am particularly interested in this phenomenon and its connections to the present.
My Satanic Panic series is comprised of two types of work: large format collages/murals, and installations of juxtaposed objects such as porcelain figurines and articulated plastic characters from different Disney and Pixar movies, among others. The collages combine fragments of Disney books published in the 1990s with portions of pedagogical books from the Ladybird series created in the 1960s and 70s.
My focus is on how the activities and games outlined in the Ladybird books replicate the gender, sexuality, race, and class stereotypes of the adult world, and how those interact with the equally regulated fantasy world of Disney. In this series, I am exploring the possibility of creating third images that in a subtle way bring all the narratives depicted in the original material into question.
Satanic Panic Series, 2021 (detail)
Satanic Panic Series 2019 Site-specific installation at Hache Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Orden y Secreto
The development of my practice is rooted in instinctive approach and eclectic interests surrounding family history,
