U.S.-dwelling Hispanics/Latinos/as (hereafter “Hispanics”) are 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s Disease or a related dementia compared to their white counterparts. Contributors to these disparities include social determinants of health (SDOH), which are structural and social factors that lead to increased stress and social disadvantage. Despite known health disparities, however, Hispanics receive less attention and poorer clinical care than their white counterparts. They are “forgotten” despite needing more recognition, care, and humanity. Thus, this piece aims to give a voice and platform to the “Cerebros Olvidados” (forgotten brains) of the Hispanic community and to pay homage to those who have fallen victim to the systems that erase their voices and continue to steal opportunities for healthy brain aging.    

The current project, which is in line with OHBM’s theme to “portray personal hardships experienced by different cultural, ethnic, and socio-economic groups,” presents the intersection of SDOH and brain aging in Hispanics over time through a series of axial brain slices. Each slice depicts a brain image on one side and an aspect of SDOH on the other side. Over time we see the impact of SDOH on the brain through neurodegeneration (e.g., atrophy). The rope represents the tight bonds of community, hope, and faith and all that makes the Hispanic community resilient in the face of SDOH. 

12" x 18"

$650 USD - Shipping Options Available

G.A.W.D She Remains was inspired by Deidra William's poem "The Black Woman". There is a beautifully powerful section of the poem that says, "The black woman should be loved and protected. For she's not just the mother of all or the closest to God but the black woman is God. G.A.W.D, GAWD. G.A.W.D, GAWD. G.A.W.D, GAWD. A Goddess After the World Demonizes her". I wanted to paint this G.A.W.D flourishing as a woman of the universe despite her role as Atlas. She stands tall with the world literally on her head, the Earth depicted in her afro.

20" x 20"

$700 USD - Shipping Options Available  

Recrudescence is about nature’s inevitable reclamation of our environment, allowing people to flourish. Further, it is a commentary on escaping the broken promise of freedom for Black people in America.

20" x 24"

$850 USD - Shipping Options Available

Monarch challenges the potentially harmful narrative that Black women are strong queens through the use of a fragile monarch butterfly in order to show that true Queenship embraces both strength and vulnerability and, therefore, we should allow Black women to be both instead of expecting them to always be strong in order to truly embody Black womanhood. 

20" x 24"

$850 USD - Shipping Options Available

White Out is about the white-washing and exclusion of Black culture in a variety of domains, academia included. 

12" x 18"

$600 USD - Shipping Options Available

Existentialist Crisis highlights how Black mental health can spawn a galaxy of thoughts–from anxious to creative.

20" x 20"

$750 USD - Shipping Options Available

Starving Artist gives a surrealist lens to the hyper-focusing that can happen when creatives with ADHD are consumed with their work. A starving artist, art is all they eat.

$3000 USD (negotiable)

On Rainbow Shoulders is a laser-cut acrylic bust. Its void was made using an MRI of the artist’s brain. The sculpture is inspired by the idiom "standing on the shoulders of giants," which means an individual’s work is built upon the work of their predecessors. Of the scientists who have contributed work foundational to brain mapping, many have/had gender or sexual identities that deviate/deviated from the norms of their times and/or cultures, often causing them to experience discrimination and violence. Surely many more did not disclose/have not disclosed their gender or sexual identity because of this. Contemporarily, many of these individuals would be/are considered queer. Brain mapping stands on the shoulders of these queer individuals and is inextricable from their contributions to science. Brain mapping also stands on the shoulders of the psychological sciences, which at times have been/are used to pathologize queerness and contribute to the marginalization of and violence against queer people. As you see yourself mirrored atop the bloodied, rainbow shoulders of the sculpture, reflect. You stand on the shoulders of queer individuals. You also stand on the shoulders of those who have harmed queer individuals. When future generations stand on your shoulders, how will they feel?

This embroidered piece is the way I imagine my brain to be structured: The words and expressions of the languages is speak, sewn into the crevices of my brain. English - the language I think, move, and reason with, takes up the cortex and cerebellum. Hebrew - the language and aesthetic that connects my family and my thoughts, makes up the corpus collosum. Finally French - the language of my childhood, one that feels like instinct but is still buried deep down, makes up my midbrain. Although each language makes up its own discrete section, the borders are fluid, so that they are all still in contact with one another.

ID-ImAGEing consists of two series of prints/drawings inspired by Nicolas Henri-Jacob’s illustration included in the third Volume of “Traité complet de l'anatomie de l'homme” by Baptiste Marc Bourgeryn (1866/1867). The first series stresses that different techniques tackle different features of the brain and provide different perspectives... but they can be applied to the same brain and together converge toward a complete depiction of who we are; the second series highlights how we, as unique individuals and as different as we can be, all share a piece of fundamental machinery – even at large humanoid robots, built to mirror human cognitive functioning. The work aims to present the uniqueness of identities as well as their shared traits by bridging the origins of neuroanatomical studies and modern innovations: the advanced techniques that we nowadays use to study the brain are means to reinterpret and implement classical knowledge coming from historical studies, which preserve their fundamental role in our present quest for the understanding of the brain architecture and its functioning.

Life is a chaotic dance that is jointly choreographed by our genetics and environment. Consequently, we are never just one thing, as our experiences shape us into layered and complex individuals. In 'Many of Me', I sought out self-reflection through abstract representations of the interactions between my brain, my identity and my mental health. This introspection was prompted by the long-standing debate on whether the brain is the true self, the engine behind the person, or whether it is simply another organ of the body. Since the relationship between myself and my brain has been tortuous at best, I lean towards the later. My brain has been, at times, my worst enemy (Tableau I), as well as my greatest treasure, the force fuelling my queerness and neurodivergence (Tableau II). My brain is also a living archive which absorbs, documents and contains the Good (the art and beauty created within all the countries I have called home- Romania, Scotland, Germany, Australia, Tableau III), along with the Bad (trauma remnants from my forebears that still shackle me through genetic chains, Tableau IV).

Being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and being resistant to common medications made me reevaluate a lot of things that I used to see as negative – such as my unusual way of approaching problems, or my random jumps of thought or thought spirals. Realising these ‘issues’ are actually strengths that gave me advantages in many aspects of my life and helped me be more creative, think out of the box, learn quickly, and lead to wonderful connections within the neurodiverse community has made me embrace that neurodiversity, utilise it, and regard it as something positive – my ADHD superpowers.

Scattered is a video project about the scattered selfness, the need of self definition and the inevitable confusion arising from that. The story is told in the double and scattered form of a lost radio communication and the video of a girl constantly transforming into something else thanks to the use of prisms, lights, colored gelatins, and make-up. The radio communication seems to come from someone confiding the dilemma of not really knowing himself and yet craving for self definition.  

Like BrainArt Exhibit 2023 and its “The Multifaceted Brain: Adaptation and Diversity” theme, Scattered addresses the emotional distress of diversity and the importance of opening up about those feelings, and of abandoning the current terminology when addressing the issue in order to help the scattered self either to finally understand the inner limits of any definition and embrace a continuous spectrum of selfness and the lack of definition associated with it.

Scattered lies between Axes II (Diversity of human sexuality) and III (Neurodiversity), because the issues of self definition and wholeness rises with any human being, and with those struggling with fitting in the usual terminology. This applies to sexual diversity as well as neurodiversity of any sort.