Final Girls & Other Work
CLAMP
247 West 29th Street, NYC
October 29 - December 19, 2020
Horror movies reflect the social anxieties of our time and are directly linked to cultural preoccupations such as religious, social and technological developments. With Final Girls, I focus on a slice of culture that played a role in the zeitgeist of the time that I’ve come of age: horror movies from the 70s and 80s. The project is an exploration into popular culture and uses color to infuse it with new meaning and interpretation. At the heart of it, the series is about the tenacity of the human spirit and our ability to confront tough obstacles. Each Final Girl symbolizes our own battles and inspires us to believe, that no matter how difficult, we are able to overcome great challenges.
CRANACH NUDES
In 2010 I visited Rome for the first time and came across a retrospective of the work of Lucas Cranach at the Galleria Borghese. I felt myself drawn to his full-length nudes – Adam and Eve, Venus with Cupid – in terms of pose, background, format and scale. As I wandered in the Borghese after viewing the show I realized how the characters and portrayals of figures from Greek and Roman myths overlapped with the saints from my Catholic upbringing and how the full-length Renaissance nude paintings referred back to the sculpture of Classical antiquity.
In this series I have explored the dialogue between male and female and the way meaning is found through the gentle rake of light on flesh, the bend of an ankle or knee, the tip of a pelvis, the dip of a shoulder or the turn of a neck. I see them as palimpsests, where each contemporary photographic image has in it the shadow of both the Renaissance painting and the Classical sculpture.
PAJARITOS
This project consists of a series of bird portraits that celebrate beauty and visual pleasure. Because of their singular ability of soaring into the sky, birds are universally seen as an allegory of freedom. “Pajaritos” (Small Birds) represent the landing place for my life journey, and embracement of queer identity. They are also my way of transforming pretty into a statement of rebellion: the angelical beauty of canaries and finches resting on a perch in front of immaculate pastel color backgrounds are as much a statement of grace, as a state of defiance.
I grew up in Honduras, where “pajaros” is a derogative term for gay men. With my project, I embrace these two cultural references: the constrictive idea that colors could define gender – blue for boys, pink for girls – and the liberating realization that I can defy the expected by emphasizing the delicate beauty of birds with the flamboyant use of pastel colors. These conflicting ideas are both reconciliatory and cathartic; they are a deconstruction of gender norms.
