commissioned installation

pencil, cut paper, amate, tracing paper, mylar, ink, acrylic

dimensions variable

2023

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Commissioned by the Museum of New Mexico Foundation as the inaugural Window Box Installation for the grand opening of the New Mexico Museum of Art, Vladem Contemporary. The installation was later restaged at Form & Concept Gallery in early 2024. 

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Apapachando la Matria depicts five generations of women in my matrilineal family line. Derived from the Nahuatl word papatzoa, apapachar means to hold with tenderness; “to caress with the soul.” La matria is a neologism; unrelated to geographical or political boundaries, it is the rematriated land of the self. In this piece, I hold with tenderness my ancestral line:  the territory that is my real and imagined relationship with daughter, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. I caress with my soul el cuerpo territorio to understand my relationship to places I inhabit and those I come from. 

 

The work contains layers of images: cut, painted, drawn, and reflected, with shadows activating the space throughout. The walls and ground are clothed in amate. A space of ceremonia, Apapachando la Matria is where I imagine earth and sky meeting one another, a heady swirl of healing and prayer from the natural and celestial worlds, where a central figure is suspended inside pattern, shadow, color, shape; it’s a space that is at once familiar and difficult to grasp, formless yet clearly echoing form. Images are alternately revealed and hidden, a metaphor for what we remember of the past, and glimpse of the future.