Mourning: love and memory

Riesgo de Incendio

February 4th –  23rd, 2025

Opening Reception: February 4th, 7 - 10pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“This collection of prints represents the intersection of the past and present. They are for me a mirror of my experiences, memories, and historical context, expressing the introspection and inner turmoil that has shaped me as a person. 

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You will notice that death is a prominent theme in this body of work, with many pieces incorporating narrative imagery from the Tarot and traditional Catholicism, two cultures whose relationships with death are woven into the fabric of their stories. Death is central to my work for a few reasons:

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1. Because I am Mexican. In my culture, death forms an integral part of life. We have celebrations for the dead; keeping them with us in this life even after they are gone. 

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2. Because I believe that nothing is more important than love.  Love occupies a crucial place in the formative years of any human being. In my formative years, that place was inhabited by death; my caretakers died when I was very young. I learned to cradle love in death. I love my dead ones; death did not take them away from me; it inhabited them, and I cannot deny death—or evade it—without denying or evading love for my parents.

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3. Because I grew up during the presidency of Felipe Calderón, who initiated the so-called "War on Drugs" in Mexico. Overnight, all the news were flooded with death; it became routine to hear about shootouts, executions, and curfews. Places that had been tranquil and safe became dangerous and full of fear. In this process of pure necropolitics, Mexico provided what are euphemistically called 'collateral' dead, while the American military-industrial complex supplied weapons to the cartels under the guise of supposed 'failed operations.' Additionally, millions of dollars generated by drug trafficking were laundered in international banks. The waves of violence did not end with Calderón’s presidency, and the resulting disintegration of social tissue remains. Today, thousands of people search for their vanished relatives, living with uncertainty and without knowing how, when, or where they disappeared. Some are located alive, but thousands more are found in clandestine graves; their loved ones finding their bodies without answers or justice. 

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How do we converse about loss without becoming numb? I turn to printmaking because I need to talk about these circumstances without words, and to do so wordlessly is easier on the heart. Bell Hooks states: Justice is a necessary element of love. The problem is not death but having our loved ones taken from us because of greed. I cannot think of death as an outsider; it is inside my love and in the pain of all of us who are hurting; in the injustices that make the act of waking up a nightmare, one that can only be confronted by nurturing spaces of joy.”