La Semilla Despues Del Fuego
March 4-25, 2023
Opening March 4, 7-10pm

In La Semilla Despues del Fuego​ (translation: The Seed After the Fire), I  used personal memories, family narratives, and the history of Nicaraguan-American relations to explore identity, dislocation and placelessness, struggles for autonomy and agency, and a process of integration and belonging. I considered the exertion of power through imperial policies, accords, and violence and examined the counter hegemonic responses ingrained in self-preservation enacted through migration, assimilation, and healing. The work reflected on Nicaragua’s struggle for autonomy against American actions with an awareness of William Walker’s belief in Manifest Destiny in the 1850s, Sandino’s guerrilla campaign for sovereignty in the 1920s, and the Reagan-backed Contras in the 1980s. I drew on 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. Moreover, I explored a process of assimilation, ideological reconciliation, and personal reconstitution as a naturalized American citizen. Works in the exhibition include a sound installation created with horn speakers, hand-woven tapestries, and an audio collage and a series of commissioned black velvet paintings based on family photographs painted by artists in Tijuana, Mexico. The paintings comment on my family's immigrant experience in two ways: the paintings' movement originating in Tijuana, crossing the border, and arriving in Los Angeles; the medium of black velvet marginalized from the Western history of painting.

Elephant
3325 Division Street
Los Angeles, CA 90065

Gallery Installation 

Patio Installation

Individual Works