For second generation immigrants in the US, religion and culture are often passed down hand in hand. Religious communities double as ethnic enclaves; the religious becomes the cultural, the strongest tether to one’s personal history. What emerges from this mix is a new syncretism, blending diasporic cultural influences and the ritualism and tradition of religion. I employ this syncretism as a framework to complicate abstract structures of colonialism, religion, and diaspora.
Born from colonial violence, mestizaje arises from both oppressed and oppressor, the result of the violent collision of indigenous culture and Spanish colonizers. It has since become the dominant identity in much of Latin America, often erasing the brutal history of colonization and extermination that led to its creation. My own mestizaje is intertwined with Catholicism. Growing up in Southern Illinois, the Spanish mass was my connection to an inaccessible culture. However, Catholicism’s bloody role in the origins of my identity complicated my relationship to both. My current process reflects those origins, consisting of alchemical fusions of raw elements, combining wood, fire, metals, flowers, and religious materials into sculptural forms drawn from Catholic and Andean mythologies. These combinations reflect on how to live with an identity and spirituality with such cruel underpinnings, and yet so closely interwoven with my personal and family history.