histérica #1 (hysterical #1), 2020

I paint with a gun—a tufting gun—along with needles, hooks, and knots. Repurposing a phallic signifier of violence, I conjure vibrant objects of comfort that inhabit a mystical pictorial space between abstraction and representation. I am interested in the unconscious mind: what lives under the surface. I am attracted by the mystical, creature-like, mythological parts of being human. Stabbing fabric with yarn, my psyche cracks open into fibers. It’s intuitive. It’s cathartic. It’s a pain in the ass. It’s draining. It’s satisfying. The resulting images are hysterical—in the truest sense of the word. Liberated from its slanderous connotations, hysteria is understood as a manifestation of the unconscious ferociously unbound. Ruptures are reborn as rugs, inviting the viewer into the home within.