Nunca Fue Tu Culpa is a testament to memory, resilience, and the wounds carried across generations. Rooted in my Indigenous identity, this series navigates the intersections of trauma, healing, and reclamation. The title—“It Was Never Your Fault”—is both a declaration and an invocation, breaking the silence imposed on our ancestors and honoring the quiet strength of those who continue to endure.

 

This body of work exists within a borderland—a space of tension and transformation, much like the one Gloria Anzaldúa describes in Borderlands/La Frontera. It speaks to the ways trauma fractures time, how pain reverberates across generations, reshaping identity, memory, and even the body itself. But just as trauma leaves its mark, so too does healing. Scientific and ancestral knowledge both affirm that we are not bound to the wounds we inherit—our DNA is not destiny. Through intentional healing, we can alter the very expressions of our genes, shifting the biological and spiritual imprints of past suffering.

 

Materiality plays a crucial role in this series. The interplay between a bright acrylic palette and handmade Oaxacan wool speaks to the duality of rupture and restoration. Acrylic’s intensity and immediacy mirror the rawness of trauma, while the warmth and texture of woven wool evoke a sense of care, resilience, and tradition. The tactile nature of wool, dyed and woven by hand, embodies the continuity of ancestral practices—an assertion that healing is not just conceptual but physical, a process deeply rooted in touch, labor, and connection.

 

Cellular and epigenetic memory become visual motifs, revealing how experiences—whether of harm or healing—are encoded within us. The compositions reflect the fractal nature of survival, where personal histories ripple outward, carrying traces of the past but also the potential for transformation.

 

Minimalism and psychedelic undertones mirror the nepantla state—Anzaldúa’s concept of in-betweenness—where clarity and distortion, memory and forgetting, rupture and repair coexist. Earthy, muted tones ground the work in belonging, while bursts of color disrupt the surface—demanding recognition, presence, and truth.

 

Nunca Fue Tu Culpa is an act of reclamation. A refusal to bear the weight of imposed shame. An offering to those who have been silenced, who have been made to feel small, erased, or rewritten. It is a call to remember—because healing is resistance, and survival itself is an art form. And just as we carry the past within us, we also carry the power to rewrite it.