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Can you discuss a particular piece featured in the exhibition and the story or concept behind it?
‘Safe Sediment’ - Part of an ongoing use of body imprints. I like the Spanish word for imprint ‘huella’ - it conjures up fingerprints in passports, animal tracks, evidence. Evidence is at the
heart of it. After making the imprint I am left with a ‘mancha’ - a stain. I like that word too. I give myself to the painting and am marked by the exchange. This always happens, but la mancha makes it visible. The imprints are reimagined. In this case, we become sediment. I jumbled up my body parts and sank them, we disintegrated and became silt. This is calming; disintegrating reminds me the exterior world is not ‘other’. It breeds a sense of belonging that transcends territory.
Are there specific goals or aspirations you have for your artistic career in the coming years?
I love working in non-traditional spaces because there’s less separation between art and
environment and people’s lives. Location and building can become part of the work’s narrative, making it harder to distinguish where the work starts and ends. For work that deals a lot with borders (human / non-human, territory, the unconscious) it’s fertile ground. And you have a different relationship with the local community; as spaces they’re inherently more welcoming and tend to exist outside the commercial system. As the practice grows, it’s important for me to keep making space for spaces like that. I would also love to design children’s playgrounds.
What role does cross-disciplinarity play in your artistic practice, if any? And if not, in what ways does Palmer Gallery’s focus on cross-disciplinarity challenge your artistic practice?
I need diversity in order to believe in the work. It allows me to explore different ideas and sides of myself. I also like missing something and returning to it. I always return to painting - it feels the most intimate, where I’m closest to my subconscious and where a lot of the processing happens. But it needs the other mediums to be sustainable and be challenged, and vice versa. They also often overlap. In that way they’re all part of one journey, even if the ‘outputs’ or ‘traces’ take on different forms.
