I reflect on my own immigrant experience while considering broader diasporic narratives, engaging with the ideologies of the American Dream - land, memory, and interconnectedness. Memory functions as both refuge and unreliable archive, becoming a site through which I research, recover, and reconstruct.
A recurring symbol in my work is the castle: an icon of desire, safety, ownership, and fulfilled dreams. I approach the castle as a metaphor for the American Dream, examining how a powerful image becomes embedded in cultural identity. Its narrative is continuously constructed by those who believe in it or inherit it. I approach making through interdisciplinary processes - through painting, sculpture, video, and poetics, I investigate how this symbol transforms when held inside the body.
As I worked through iterations with the image of the castle, it began to shift. What first appeared as an architectural form slowly dissolved - eventually becoming something bodily. Walls softened into limbs, spines, windows transformed into cavities. The castle sank into its foundation and became flesh - formed through clay and my direct touch.
This transformation relates to the Spanish word encarnar, to become ingrained or attached to the body. As the castle evolves it’s eventually replaced by organic and bodily forms that exist in a continual state of becoming.