Mixed media, graphite and ink drawing, and altar

Matriarchal Memory

This altar is an honoring of my matrilineal roots– a memorial of landscapes in Shafter, Texas, tracing several generations of ancestors from their origins to their migration to California. This altar is an act of storytelling, re-articulating family hxstory.

Installed at the Ancestral Lights exhibit at Self Help Graphics & Art annual Day of the Dead celebration in 2019.

“unspoken ancient laws written out in moon face smiles, dimples, rituals of storytelling around the kitchen table. un-remembered, but never broken, matriarchal structures feeding the fires of our extensive kinship bonds, spider loom threading me to you. i remember sitting in circle, with cuzins and my tía’s breath unwinding our origin stories of adobe houses, shoemakers, zarape weavers, migrant farmers, train hoppers, border crossers and magic makers.

i was not the first truth seeker, blessed we are to come from a legacy of visionary matriarchs shaking this world to make way for our liberation. i remember when our little hands were taught the art of altar building, foundation setting. tía-movement-maker had no words for placing the bowl of water, spirit plate, igniting fire but her act of remembering unlocked mysteries previously denied to us. planting a seed in us that will later serve as our greatest power.”

Graphite and ink drawing

Codex Americana: The Beginning/End of Time

This drawing maps out a sacred landscape drawing on various creation stories, cultural and archeological items, cosmologies from different regions. The beginning of time is marked by the so-called “Aztec calendar” date 1-Cipactli (Crocodile) emerging with a river, and cycling towards the last day 13-Xochitl (flower), emerging with a growing corn.

Drawn for a 2016 art exhibit at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, CA and later exhibited at the Guardians of the Water exhibit hosted by The Cultural Conservancy at San Francisco State University.

Digital collage

Bones of Our Ancestors

Digital collages created with the direction of Celia Herrera Rodriguez in response to the Pope’s canonization of Junipero Serra, the frier responsible for the missionization and colonization of California. They were exhibited at the Bones of Our Ancestors: Endurance and Survival Beyond Serra’s Missions exhibit, part of San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center’s annual Day of the Dead Celebration in 2015.