Performance, digital photography
Fixing the Baroque (Solo exhibition)
ACRE Projects
Chicago, United States
2023-2024
San Pascual Baylón I
Digital photograph, performance
50 x 34 in
Edition of 8, 2 AP
San Pascual Baylón III
Digital photograph, performance
50 x 38 in
Edition of 8, 2 AP
In the San Pascual Baylón series, I portray myself as a kitchen worker, a job I did right after graduating from my MFA in 2022. These were the first jobs I had outside the art world, as my visa status changed from F1—also known as student visa—to Temporary Protection Status. Students are only allowed to work on areas related to their field of study, thus, the big step that working in the restaurant industry meant to me.
Sometimes associated with the stereotype of immigrant workers, the restaurant industry jobs are some sort of initiation into the productive force for many Americans, too. As many citizens take these as their first jobs, while they are students, or stay in the industry for life, restaurant jobs are essential for the American labor culture. Because of this, my kitchen jobs symbolized my integration into the American economy, becoming a meaningful stage in my immigration process.
In this series, I use Tenebrist aesthetic codes borrowed from the Counter-Reformist Baroque. By using this approach, I seek to elevate the figure of kitchen workers to that of saints, in this case, Saint Paschal Baylón, patron of cooks and kitchens. This decision complicates the series, as it refers to an artistic tradition that was not as common in what today is the United States, but was in the colonial times in Latin America. Through this tactic, I seek to question the ruptures and continuities of the Anglo and Latin Americas’ histories