Stories of Self

My practice is one of recovery and care.

I spiral slowly through past and future lives, reconstructing and navigating moments and materials as they accrue. I work in the interstitial territories of the long, rich lineage of women working at their kitchen tables, in ethereal zones – the so-called empty spaces, those rendered invisible, the domestic hauntings of homes, where evidence of work is put away, stashed before others return, taken out again when privacy allows time and space to work. I work in the zones of the body, space of my lap, in the palms of my hands. I work with leftovers.

I occupy border time zones so ancient that the archetypes of land and myth are encoded in my genes. My autobiography is a braided narrative of a lifelong identity as an artist, a 30-year curatorial practice, and being a parent. It starts at multiple points in time, with multiple points overlapping and converging until they achieve a complete superimposition into one point in time, when that point splits apart and the process resumes. I, and they, these points, iterate knowledge and understanding, rather than arrive at a conclusion. Thus I, and they, begin in the past, within the interior of memory itself. Who am I? Any number of possible identities (roles, experiences, metaphors). I am, have been “given” identity. The memory materializes physically.

My materials almost always retain traces of the bodies that produced or assembled or engaged with them. They include clothes made and worn by members of my family and me, including undergarments made by my paternal grandmother for her προίκα (dowry), and domestic objects made by my maternal grandmother; vintage textiles, including from Greece (often left over from the dowries of others); hair from family members, living and deceased; and other diverse repurposed materials. I recombine these items into larger format objects that share qualities with collage, such as appliqued hand- and machine-stitched textile panels, works in clay that integrate textiles and other elements post-firing, children’s toys, and works on and with paper, including books. These objects tell fragments of stories, like text panels in a graphic novel or cells from an animated film strip or a still from a film.

My work draws from personal/ancestral histories and the landscape of my dreams, a place where the psyche enacts what politics forbids. A space between consciousness and unconsciousness. I believe my dreams are also those of others, that dreams exist in shared spaces, that they are collective constructs. I explore and enliven what’s lost and found in that veiled space between dreams and waking.

Working across textiles, drawing, clay, writing, and spatial engagement, my work explores how art can hold the unseen and tend to the relational.

Informed by the Latin curare – to care for – my artistic and curatorial work acts as a form of stewardship: attentive, embodied, and responsive. Across three decades, I have cultivated a deeply situated practice shaped by daily ritual, collective inquiry, and a commitment to creating spaces that remember, reclaim, and repair.

My artwork has been seen in group exhibitions at Cal State Dominguez Hills and Cal State Northridge and have participated various community program initiatives. I have had two residencies at High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree, CA. I have had artist pages published in the journals Journal Journal and Whitewalls. I have work in the permanent collections of the Getty Research Institute, the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Los Angeles Contemporary Archives, as well as in private collections. I was a presenter at the graduation ceremony at California Institute of the Arts in 2020.

Personally, as well as in my artmaking, writing, and curatorial practice, I have a particular interest in artworks that cross disciplines and media — works of quiet transgression that advance transformational experiences, both personal and political. This can be seen (not always so quietly) in Below the Underground: Renegade Art and Action in 1990s Mexico (2017), one of my research, curatorial, and publishing projects, which explored social spaces and political actions generated by non-mainstreamed artists on streets, rooftops, subways, and elsewhere in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey. The project also included multiple performances and panel talks.

My writing, exhibition projects, and curatorial work have contributed to national and international conversations about under-examined artists, suppressed histories, and the role of institutions in either perpetuating or repairing harm. These topics were addressed in From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments (2022), a research project that resulted in an exhibition, publication, website, and series of public programs that explored diverse technologies, histories of contested spaces, and traditional understandings of nature as they imagined alternative, sustainable futures.

I carry into every project a commitment to making visible what institutional culture has too often left in the margins. My curatorial and publishing projects have been awarded by foundations including the Warhol Foundation, the California Community Foundation, The Fellows of Contemporary Art, IASPIS, the Getty, The Mike Kelley Foundation, the Perenchio Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, and by civic agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the Illinois Art Council, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. I have served on numerous grant and review panels nationally. For more on selected public projects, see Stories with Others.

As an educator and mentor, I teach art, writing, and curatorial/institutional practice across a wide range of contexts — from graduate seminars to community centers serving youth at risk. This range is not incidental. It reflects a core conviction: that rigorous artistic thinking (along with play!) belongs everywhere. My pedagogy creates conditions for collective inquiry, slow looking, and honest reflection. I push students to interrogate the assumptions embedded in their practice — who their work is for, what it takes from its subjects, what it gives back, and how care operates in the studio, the exhibition, and the archive. These are not abstract questions. They are methods.