ARTIST STATEMENT

My paintings and prints invite viewers to be intimate with death. I grew up with a duality in my understanding of this concept: I celebrated and enjoyed el día de los muertos, yet thinking about my own death caused fear and mental paralysis. I began making art as an exploration of this fear and an investigation into the afterlives of my paternal grandparents, Antonia and Andrew Chavez. Both of them passed away before I was born, and with them died my family’s knowledge of the Spanish language. To me, death means ceasing to exist as a living physical form, but it does not mean the end of one’s emotional life or their capacity to affect the living.

I have been told that my work often appears as a memory. I believe this effect stems from the energy imbued in my process: I enter into a place of remembering whenever I am making. While not everything comes directly from my experiences, I am evoking history in everything I do, whether that be personal history, cultural history, or art history. Many of my works, for instance, use anonymous, womanly bodies to represent ancestral history. Others use specific references to family members or figures from art history to unearth and solidify connections.

I attribute the intimate nature of my work to Frida Kahlo, and the bodily nature of my work to Ana Mendieta. The artwork of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx women has always resonated with me deeply, for there is a bond in the history of the land from which our families came. I make with them in mind, and I am unapologetic about their impact on my practice. My body belongs to a lineage of women who have questioned the abuse of our individual and collective bodies, seeking new forms of healing and empowerment through the arts.