Within the intricate web of my identity, my work emerges from the tensions of growing up in a devout Mexican Catholic household. Under the weight of sin, I was discouraged from exploring interests deemed taboo, and any attempt at self-expression outside the norm was met with shame. Amid a culture deeply rooted in ritual and reverence for the afterlife, I became fascinated by the gothic elements embedded in Catholic Latino practices — graveyards as sacred spaces, skeleton imagery, and supernatural beliefs.

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Religious symbols, particularly La Virgen de Guadalupe, take on layered cultural significance in my work. As both a maternal figure of comfort and a symbol of spiritual authority, she embodies the paradox of cultural reverence and colonial imposition. La Virgen was introduced as a tool of religious conversion by positioning her as a divine apparition to an Indigenous man. Colonial forces used her image to erase ancestral beliefs and to serve colonial agendas.

 

Through this clash of faith and suppressed curiosity, I developed a complex relationship with religious symbolism, where nostalgia and fear coexist. At a young age, while navigating my queer identity, I faced intensified feelings of shame and judgment. In response, my fascination with horror deepened. Its embrace of nonconformity, marginalization, and transformation mirrored my own experience as an outsider. From the bold, lavish aesthetics of 70s and 80s horror films, I draw inspiration for my visual language — nightmarish scenes of high contrast, unnatural color palettes, and encounters with the divine. By constructing these spaces, I offer viewers a moment of reflection on personal fears, and an invitation to explore the unsettling, yet liberating, dimensions of identity and self-expression.