Afterimages

My work explores the fragility of memory and its role in shaping both personal and cultural identity. I am interested in how recollections fracture, blur, or collapse over time, and how these distortions alter our sense of self and place. Miami, where I live and work, serves as both backdrop and subject for these investigations. Its layered histories, kitsch iconography, and ongoing cycles of destruction and renewal provide a lens through which to examine how memory is preserved, rewritten, or erased.

Across painting and mixed-media processes, I use layered surfaces, subdued palettes, and abstracted imagery to evoke the instability of memory. Figures and environments often dissolve into one another, mirroring the way recollection collapses time and space. Drips, splatters, and ghostly highlights suggest moments fading, reemerging, or slipping from view. By pairing these visual elements with ambient soundscapes, I aim to create a multisensory experience that deepens emotional resonance and invites viewers to reflect on their own memory constructs.

While grounded in personal recollection, the work extends into broader cultural critique. In South Florida, where historic neighborhoods are increasingly displaced by gentrification and exclusionary politics, memory itself becomes contested terrain. I often incorporate symbolic and kitsch elements such as plastic marlins, holiday lights on palm trees, and artificial snow as markers of regional identity and its impermanence. These icons embody both nostalgia and loss, raising questions about what traditions and communities endure amid erasure.

Ultimately, my work sits between intimate remembrance and collective history. Each piece functions as both artifact and commentary, asking us to witness memory’s instability, acknowledge what is being lost, and find meaning in impermanence.