[Untitled]

The mixed media nature of my piece tells the story of how I came to be who I am today. I started with a self portrait, which was already challenging enough, but I used new paints to push myself to really take my time recognizing the expression I was portraying. I started out angry and questioning my place in the current political climate as a student and as an activist–that is the center of my story as a first generation four year university student. When I see myself I see my silver hoops and my handmade button that sits on my beret, and I see my heart exposed to the elements and emotions that come with feeling isolated within a disapproving institution. Yet at the same time I honor the beauty of love I’ve found in my Latine community on campus.

The second part of this piece is how much of my family’s strength and stories I’ve carried with me on my own personal journey. I spent time gathering all the family pictures, then printing and cutting each individual photo out. I pasted each photo to overlap and tell a story from my immediate family's roots starting in the US. From the bottom up the stories start in different places for the two sides of my family. Down the middle I separate them as much as their stories allow because they begin to conjoin when my parents meet.

The two separate stories for me inform how I was brought up in two cities in So-Cal, surrounded by lowrider culture and the Boyle Heights Chicano activism legacy. I was inspired by the family photo albums I spent so much time browsing out of pure curiosity to know where we come from and remember to carry my family with me in my heart and what I study because it was their decisions that made it possible for me to be here today.

Through their pictures I want to show the faces and how they look like mine. I want to show the hobbies, the jobs, the love, the community, and the capturing of moments that went into making this piece possible. My grandparents had no idea that taking polaroids would inspire me today but with this piece I inherit their nature of archiving their lives, to archive our legacy.