Milagros in My Pocketbook
Milagros in My Pocketbook is a reflection of our age of anxiety. The themes of communication, environmental and political uncertainty, inequality, and war are explored in 2 and 3D collages through the devices of absurdity, whimsy, and even gallows humor.
I have created multiple conversations between vastly different creatures, real and imaginary, to illustrate the need for communication and respectful discourse in our increasing divisive society. Anxiety over climate change, extinction of species, religion, disintegration of the rule of law, threats of war, and our terrible powerless state of being (the human condition) are all expressed through the juxtaposition of humans, animals, and insects. The works address death, risky behaviors, weapons of mass destruction, and let us not forget the need for comfort animals and a good cosmic shrug.
As of late, it seems we need a miracle to fix what ails us politically and environmentally, hence the name, Milagros in My Pocketbook (Milagros is Spanish for ‘miracles’ and a reference to personal religious charms nailed to symbolic objects of prayer in the Mexican tradition). The piece from which the exhibition takes its name is part cynical and part heartfelt. I think things would be quite different if we carried our hearts in our pocketbooks.
In my visual language, the heart represents not only love and life itself, but all that is vulnerable in our lives, leaving us open to great joy and suffering. As a person who has felt alienated by religion for much of my life, I have a complicated relationship to religious icons. I find them visually fascinating, and associate them with the history of western art, yet they hold a completely different set of meanings for me quite apart from their religious associations.