Mariposas De Mi Vida
Spring 2024
A family of mixtures finding home in many lands like the small-winged Monarch.
-Movement, finding a new place to call home, a new life, a glorified venture in the eyes of Western domineering culture; tears at the seams of lives committed to labor for the sake of a better future.
Mariposas De Mi Vida combines the landscape between my home in Minneapolis and my family’s home near Milwaukee with portraits of immediate and extended family members. The physical connection to land, immigration, people, and all tenses of time, is a continuation of the indigenous Mexica practice of storytelling. To complete this honor there must be a performance in conjunction with the long-form visual codex. This form of storytelling gives space for the complexity of Benji’s heritage and claims to culture.
Foundation; hijo con papá is a concrete platform heavy in its labor and a stage for presentation. The physical concrete represents the labor Papá and Hijo did to make for a better life. The painting, Tlaloc’s Venture; Release, is a self portrait laying in reflection. During the time of this portrait my grandmother Jane was passing to the cosmos. She was the spiritual teach for me and my siblings, a connector of the invisible, yet felt. The painting holds themes of grief, soft confidence, labor, and melds myself with the Earth. The performance Saunter called upon the spirit of Jane and those who do not have the privilege of traveling. With word, song, and dance, these people are honored and remembered.
