Dream America examines the structural inequalities and forms of violence that shape the everyday lives of vulnerable communities. It invites viewers to confront an unresolved tension between migration, acculturation, and profit—individual and systemic, cultural and material.
The photograph, which shares the series’ title, depicts a former restaurant co-worker balancing a heaping tray of dirty dishes on one side and the American flag on the other. It emerges from my early experience as a newly arrived Venezuelan artist in New York City, navigating the liminal space between making art and making a living.
This sculptural piece honors Johnny, a former co-worker from a NY restaurant where I worked. Johnny, originally from Mexico and a Nahuatl speaker, was underpaid, in part due to language barriers. The sculpture, featuring a metal door, magnets, and forks, captures this sound as a tribute to Johnny’s hard work and perseverance.
Consists of an ascending, ladder-like arrangement of soap bars branded “Hispano,” evoking an olfactory memory familiar to many within Hispanic communities. The work draws a connection between the American narrative of upward mobility and the colonial myth of El Dorado, while probing the desire to climb toward the elusive—yet slippery—promise of the American Dream, often at any cost.
Embroidery Tapestry / Interactive Game
The name of this work references a network of northbound freight trains atop which hundreds of thousands of migrants try to make their way to the USA every year.
An interactive shuffleboard designed for interaction.
This interactive sculpture critiques the intersection of immigration, incarceration, and corporate capitalism in the United States. The figures embedded within the work reference the profits generated by private prison companies, which exploit the unpaid or underpaid labor of predominantly marginalized communities.
Over the past decade, more than 1.2 million Americans have been shot. Millions have witnessed gun violence firsthand, and nearly every American will know a victim in their lifetime. Each year, approximately 36,000 people are killed by firearms—an average of 100 lives lost every day.
The intervention of over 300 postcards announcing the 2015 Whitney Museum grand opening of its 422 million dollar building, with "You Can See America From Here" printed on the postcards. I created a grid continuously repeating the quote "You can See America From Here." replacing the image of the new building with a mirror that reflects the visage of all of the possibilities that America can contain.
DETAIL