My figurative drawings pull from ancestral folklore, family history, and queer autobiography, and they are set against the larger backdrop of Mexican American heritage. In contrast to traditional white backgrounds, I use brown craft paper and amate, the paper of pre-colonized Aztecs made from fig trees, channeling the ingenious customs which bind us to the earth, sun, and my queer ancestors.

In kinship with the brujería (“witchcraft”) of my great-grandmother, my practice is further guided by the magic rituals of the unknown. Drawing—a repetitive, solo act—allows me to tap into a pre-colonial mindset, free of the racialized anxieties of the present. My color field drawings of repetitive, meditative lines are made through a trance-like practice, similar to posesión (“possession”). My narrative drawings reclaim traditional iconography of Mexican machismo in anachronistic tableaus that center the Brown queer body, capturing the simultaneous longing and lust of queer love in the diaspora.