Portraiture is my tool to venerate the people in my community. My mixed media portraits reclaim my Blackness by incorporating fabrics used in rituals practiced in Santeria; one of the ways I honor the people I paint is by using the fabric as my canvas. I highlight joy and resilience while reclaiming spaces of vulnerability and trauma. Painting the portraits allows me to connect with them while captivating what I see. It allows us to have control of the narrative. 

Growing up, I knew I was a storyteller. I reclaim the ways that queer, Black, Latine, and African-based spiritualities have been erased and stereotyped by leaning into the vibrancy of my community. People deserve to be given their flowers while they're still here. My Rhinoceros Armor Project, inspired by Assata Shakur’s, Rhinoceros Woman poem in her autobiography, encompasses all the layers in their paintings, but taking the form of wearable garments. In this series, they reclaim the body from an outward gaze in a way that is spiritually protective and venerating.