Artist Statement

Each of us carries the memories of our home, our friendships, and our individual stories. I create desert landscape installations as a metaphor for my upbringing in the border towns of Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, in the United States. Cacti sculptures made with clay reference my Mexican cultural heritage and are a metaphor for the resilient spirit of our collective stories as immigrants in the U.S.

The influence of ancient Mexican sculpture and artists such as Damian Ortega, Gabriel Orozco, Teresa Margolles, Doris Salcedo, Francisco Toledo, and Torbjorn Kvasbo have all made an impression on my philosophy of creating objects.

Through my artwork, I am creating a bridge between plants, the body, and the places they inhabit. I reference the barrel cactus, the nopal or prickly pear, and the Sahuaro, all representing Mexico’s cultural identity and the Texas landscape. These are coil-built and pinched to create the spines that define the cactus. Each cactus form has a naturalistic approach that I observe in nature, such as how the environment affects its growth. Some of my sculptures are fired, and some are left in their raw ephemeral state to reference the land we share.

Cactus sculpture detail from Nasher Windows: Home and Land Project. Installation, 2020. Unfired terracotta clay, decomposed granite, and terracotta fragments.