Portals

In my iterative installation, Portals, I explore site-responsive mixed-media paintings on mylar, mounted on plexiglass, wood and masonite supports inspired by the negative spaces of chain-link fences. These shaped paintings, backed with wooden supports, appear to float an inch off the wall, allowing a subtle glow of color to surround each piece and reflect off their backs. Arranged in sweeping compositions, the works reference both micro and macro life-forms, from the atomic scale to the cosmos, collapsing the simplistic binaries of here/there and in/out to evoke a sense of the celestial and terrestrial simultaneously.

Portals is part of my ongoing exploration of the fencescape, reflecting the psychic landscape of my interiority as a DACA recipient, originally from Ecuador but raised and residing in the US (Miami/NYC). By using the chain-link, I challenge common assumptions about migration and borders, presenting a multiverse of experiences arising from the conditions of being undocumented in the United States today.

In Portals, the chain-link fence transcends its contemporary connotations of separation and becomes gestural, painterly, playful, abstract, and phantom-like. The negative spaces created between the edges of the portals not only resemble the chain-link fence but, through gestural abstraction, also recall waterways, veins, and interconnected pathways. These shapes point toward the invisible journeys taken in migration, both physical and psychological.

The works form an archipelago of islands, each one a memoryscape, fencescape, and site for undocumented futurity. Through these works, I aim to offer a new perspective on the immigrant experience, transforming symbols of division into spaces of play, care, and possibility.