I am an Afro-Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist exploring the tactile connections textiles and craft offer in accessing cultural identity and using decorative architectural motifs to evoke the duality of comfort and discomfort within our environments. Through printmaking, ceramics, collage, and fiber art, my work investigates the interplay between “hard and soft,” questioning material representation and its connotations in design history. My practice draws visual inspiration from rejas (iron gates), to evoke the duality of comfort and discomfort in our environments. Taking its form as a personal investigation of culture and my position within it through this study of colonial architectural elements; the rejas, that protect our homes and sites of comfort, also send conflicting messages of identity, territoriality, exclusion, and status.

Currently pursuing an MA in Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), I focus on decolonial arts programming, artist resources, and fashion collection management and archiving. I hold a BFA with a minor in Fashion Studies from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. My work delves into how environments act as external reflections of self, examining the dual significance of decorative objects in bringing beauty to space while interrogating their colonial and cultural implications.