At my best, I use art to navigate epistemological conflicts and intersections that arise from existing within and interacting with modern spaces, in material and immaterial terms. In less academic language, this just means I’m interested in people and all of the vastly different ways that they live, and experience the world—  and ultimately the ways in which interacting with each other spurs growth.

This artistic approach is heavily inspired by my omnivorous consumption of genres and film forms, as well as philosophical and political movements. John Waters’ transgressive Camp films and German Expressionism, Dream Pop and the Iranian New Wave, Industrial Hip Hop and Post-Colonial Theory all go hand-in-hand into my creative drive and output. The result is often work that feels visceral, absurd, and layered. I feel that much of my urge to weave (or smash) together these disparate realities is motivated by my personal experience as a white Latino man — audiovisual media have become the best way to express and explore the complications of selfhood and feelings of constant otherness in an attempt to self-identify. The art is personal as much as it is a way to understand other people. 

While creating art that exercises intellectual capacities is important, over time I’ve realized that my work is best when it’s created towards an end, and I’ve found that many of my favorite projects by other artists also tend to have a kind of teleology. This greater end can be vaguely evocative as well as grounded in a specific ideology, but I will always find it has a way of feeding the soul. The type of art I would like to create ultimately falls under this category — of food for the spirit.

“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.” — Andrei Tarkovsky