About my Art

This year, I explored my identity as a Chicano in a low-income neighborhood in Los Angeles and society’s conditioning of its constituents to conceal negative emotions. My first piece, “Masks”, share my struggle with expressing my emotions and the feeling of burdening those around me. My second piece attempts to raise awareness of the villanization of Chicanos in low-income communities by policing institutions. As I explore these topics, I try to shed light on marginalized or often silenced voices and experiences. Although both projects explore different subject matters and themes, they both speak to my daily lived experiences. With my pieces, I hope to give the viewer an intimate understanding of the aspects of my life that influence my view of the world. 

"Masks" resulted from my SAS Visual Art Seminar class. For this project, we were asked to create or continue an artistic conversation with a historical art work or to explore narrative through art. Wanting to voice intimate aspects of my life, I chose to endeavor on artistic narratives. “Masks” was a result of that eagerness. This piece features three subjects, a screaming orange clown, a sad blue clown, and a shirtless depiction of myself. Each clown represents a different version of myself: one who is somber and wallows in his depression, another whose anger manifests itself in vicious screaming matches, and a more humane one who is forced to bottle up the previous two iterations and learn to balance two poles. For this piece, I used Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils on a toned gray 16x16in sheet of paper.

The second project of the course allowed students to experiment with still-lifes, the gaze, or the body. For my second project, I wanted to continue exploring artistic narrative and chose to center my project around the gaze. Inspired by the Made in LA show at The Hammer, I decided to voice the Chicano experience and, specifically, the negative effects of policing in low-income neighborhoods. The piece depicts the storefronts on the intersection between Cesar E. Chavez Ave. and N. Chicago St. in Boyle Heights. Historical images of Chicano residents line the street, and on the shaded area to the left, a man can be seen being arrested. The use of chalk pastel allowed me to adopt a loose style that mimics the advertised benefits of the police system and also juxtaposes the realistic images of the residents, which are symbolic of the tragic realities of police brutality and racial profiling. The piece was made on 36x48in cardstock.