I paint everyday Latinos as luchadores, because survival—crossing a border, working a field, raising a family far from home—takes the same strength we assign to these masked heroes. The same reverence we give our saints. My work borrows from the visual language of lucha libre, religious iconography, and Mexican folk imagery to make a point to insist that the people society reduces to stereotypes are, in fact, the heroes of their own story.

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I continue that work alongside a newer, more directly activist collection of pieces. Work that places today's violence against immigrants next to the historical violence it echoes, refusing to let either be treated as an isolated incident. One practice paints the everyday as heroic; the other names the violence that makes that heroism necessary in the first place. Two distinct ways of portraying the same argument.

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I work mainly in oil, drawn to its permanence and its history — though I'll shift materials when the subject asks for it: watercolor for something more tender, cardboard and found surfaces when I want a piece to feel handled and human rather than precious, mixed media when the medium itself is part of the argument.

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As a Mexican immigrant currently living in Orlando, every piece I make is an argument that Latinos, myself included, are worthy all along.