Surface and Sacrifice examines the emotional, physical, and generational weight carried by immigrant and undocumented families whose labor sustains the landscapes of Utah. Growing up in a mixed-status household, I witnessed my parents build homes they could never own, shape neighborhoods that would never credit them, and work through exhaustion, illness, and uncertainty in pursuit of stability for their children. These memories root my practice and guide my material choices.

Working with concrete, sand, copper, ancient earth pigments, and acrylic, I treat each artwork as a site where material history and family memory converge. These substances, which I’ve seen associated with construction, labor, and resilience, transform into metaphors for the unseen sacrifices that underlie immigrant survival. Their weight, grit, and fracture embody both burden and endurance.

In Surface and Sacrifice, I integrate traditional Mexican techniques, including papel picado patterns, embroidery-inspired linework, and altar-making sensibilities. These motifs weave through layers of industrial material, suggesting the cultural inheritances carried across borders and preserved despite displacement. The surfaces evoke construction zones, protest banners, and devotional spaces, sites of both struggle and reverence.

This exhibition is not solely autobiographical; it is communal in nature. It asks viewers to consider the invisible infrastructures of labor that uphold our cities and households. By foregrounding the textures of work and the echoes of migration, these pieces honor undocumented families whose stories are often obscured beneath the very structures they help build. Through abstraction, I invite audiences to feel, rather than simply observe, the weight and resilience of these lived experiences.