Artist Bio
Grounded in abstract mixed media, my practice draws on cultural iconography, archival materials, and ancestral stories that bridge New York, Puerto Rico, and Africa. These sources form a living archive that informs my exploration of identity and illuminates the resilience, brilliance, and transformative power of Black and Brown women. Through a deliberately female-centered lens, my work examines the interconnected forces of struggle, joy, and rebirth shaping our collective histories.
My creative practice spans painting, sculpture, and immersive installations. Each project begins with a conceptual inquiry, and the theme or subject determines the materials I select, whether carved shipping pallets, distressed textiles, beads, archival fragments, or found objects. I begin many works by imprinting the first gestures with my body, often my feet, establishing a pulse of movement that guides the composition. I manipulate acrylics and water to mirror the fluidity of migration and remembrance, drawing on ideas of recall, ancestral inheritance, and lineage as guiding frameworks. Carving, beading, layering, and assemblage allow me to honor African and Indigenous technologies of making, mending, and storytelling.
Textiles remain central to my visual language. Through painting, patterning, and layering cloth with symbols, motifs, abraded textures, and color, I invoke ancestral memory and assert the enduring presence of African and Indigenous epistemologies across the diaspora. Each material choice carries narrative weight, revealing the expansive reach of Black cultural influence across art, science, agriculture, ritual, and daily life.
My work invites audiences to move through time, reflecting on the past, confronting the present, and imagining liberatory futures shaped by resilience, community, and the unbroken thread of collective memory.
CV
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Blue in Bed - 80WSE Gallery, NYU Graduate Program Window Show (Winter 2023)
The Divine Feminine: Black and Taíno Sacred Bodies, Smith Gallery, Grinnell College (Spring 2022)
Hurricane Maria - Senior Project Show, Little Red School House (Summer 2018)
Greenwich Village - Project Art Exhibit at Greenwich House (Spring 2013)23)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Umarell Art Show, 214 40th St, Brooklyn, NY, and 27 Forsyth St, New York, NY — Winter 2025
21st Annual Small Works Show, 440 Gallery, New York, NY — Winter 2025
Women in the Heights, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, New York, NY — Spring 2025
The Space She Holds, AM:PM Gallery, New York, NY — Spring 2025
Fragments, 26 Scott Ave, Brooklyn, NY — Winter 2025
Glory: Glorifying The Beauty of the Island, AM:PM Gallery, New York, NY — Winter 2024
Salon XII, The Village Collective; Judson Memorial Church, New York, NY — Winter 2024
Salon XI, The Village Collective; Judson Memorial Church, New York, NY — Fall 2024
Ritual, Rites & Routine, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, New York, NY — Fall 2024
An Unruly Field, 80WSE Gallery, New York, NY — Spring 2024
Her Gaze, AM:PM Gallery, New York, NY — Spring 2024
Inside Outwards, 80WSE Gallery, New York, NY — Spring 2023
BAX, Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA— Spring 20
BAX, Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA— Spring 202212
Early College Summer Program Group Show, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL— Summer 2017
ARTIST TALKS
21st Annual Small Works Show Artist Talk, 440 Gallery, New York, NY — Winter 2025
Women in the Heights: Hair, Artist Talk, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, New York, NY — Spring 2025
AWARDS
Merit Scholarship, New York University MFA Program
Special Distinction in Architecture for Most Original Design, Pioneer Academic Scholar, Columbia University
Merit Scholarship for Drawing and Painting, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Recanati Kaplan Award for Excellence in the Arts Award, 92nd Street Y
COMMISSIONS AND PROJECTS
Mermaid, Commissioned Artwork for Professor Tamara Beauboeuf at Grinnell College, Summer 2022
Homage to Nobel Prize Winner Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye Online Presentation, Elisabeth Irwin High School, New York, NY, Spring 2014
Project Art Live Auction; "Make Your Mark" - Puck Building, New York, NY, 2014; The Hole Gallery, New York, NY, 2014
