As an artist my main objective is to be a vehicle to develop awareness around certain topics. Very close to my heart are issues regarding the environment and my own personal immigrant story as a woman in the United States.

 

My work aims, in its purest sense to transcend the mundane trappings of our everyday life.  In my work the impossible becomes attainable, dreams become reality and utopias succeed. I envision my pieces as a window, a portal into another dimension. In this dimension I can make sense of that which otherwise makes no sense. I can marry opposing subjects such as, a tree created of repurposed plastic and yarn or a landscape where above ground it is so austere no life is evident, but below it a whole world of colorful vegetation exists. Combining, reevaluating, repurposing disparate materials is a big part of my work. In my work I incorporate traditional, as well as untraditional materials. Anything from yarn, and thread to fabric remnants, heirloom textiles, plastic bags, plastic lids, and found objects. Nothing is wasted, everything can be reused, upcycled, transformed. By employing all these materials, I get to reconcile, to stitch, to patch, to mend the world around me.

 

Being an immigrant woman in a foreign country, instruments in great part my choice of subject matter. I create visual utopias full of exotic plants, flowers, exuberant foliage, and exotic peoples, in an effort at transporting myself to an invented place. A place where memories exist, a place of legends and allegories. My pieces are vibrant yet nostalgic, full of longing for a place that does not exist anymore anywhere but in my imagination. I yearn for my land, my roots yet, I am aware the place I miss does not exist, anywhere but in my memory.

 

Issues of gender equality and feminism are always present. I insist, in making women be the protagonist in all of my pieces. In my utopian landscapes, the Earth and everything in it is female. Mother Earth we say, and it is she who rules. It is she who protects us, and it is she who feeds and nurtures us. Using embroidery, stitching, fabric remnants, handmade heirloom textiles, all materials and techniques usually secluded to the domestic realm provide me with a particular esthetic language. A more intimate, quintessentially female language to express myself as I pursue to raise these materials and techniques to a wider sphere of discussion and awareness.