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artist statement
I explore power relations, the collision and negotiations of ideologies, and struggles for autonomy and agency. I am interested in the use of architecture and built environments, industrial and military equipment, and media technologies to visually organize the world in relation to power and ideological beliefs. I consider the exertion of power by governments and institutions through policies, accords, and brute force and examine the counter hegemonic responses by communities, families, and individuals ingrained in self-preservation. I draw on personal memories of my family’s displacement from Nicaragua due to the 1979 revolution sparked by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional and our arrival as immigrants in the United States exploring a process of assimilation and personal reconstitution as naturalized American citizens. My work delves into Nicaragua’s struggles for autonomy taking into account Spanish colonialism and it’s eventual downfall in 1821. I examine American imperialist interventions beginning in the 1850s facilitated by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the emergence of Manifest Destiny in the 1840s. I reflect on William Walker declaring himself president of Nicaragua in 1856 and his eventual assassination, Augusto Sandino’s guerrilla resistance against U.S. occupation in the 1920s, the corrupt and oppressive 46-year Somoza family dictatorship, and the U.S. backed Contras fighting the communist FSLN in the 1980s. I contemplate on Nicaragua’s current political situation where the FSLN are back in power as a tyrannical regime repressing freedom of speech and civil liberties.