I'm a San Francisco-based artist, working in 16mm film and digital media. I'm originally from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Because of where I grew up, my work is driven by a fiercely anti-colonial spirit, although my work is extremely personal and only indirectly political. I explore lucid dreams, with doses of reality and humor, from an intimate, poetic, DIY perspective. Stories are shown but not told. Images unfold organically, from this experiential point-of-view. Joy and sadness, the artificial world and nature, etc., are not neatly reduced to a single field of emotion. Through this playful unveiling, I aim to show how we are manipulated by seductive imagery and propaganda.
My current in-progress project, 13th Street Division, is a longer format experimental narrative and my attempt to blend the personal and the political in a subtle manner. Some recent short films include Reciprocity Failure (2015), Imum Coeli (bottom of the sky) (2011) and Elfmädchen (2009). Imum Coeli and Elfmädchen both premiered at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, where Elfmädchen received a Best Animation Award. My films have screened at avant-garde and experimental film festivals such as Antimatter in Victoria, Canada; Boston Underground, Oakland Underground and Portugal Underground. They have also been presented at diverse art venues such as Anthology Film Archives, Sundance Film Forward at the Museo de Puerto Rico; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; and the Black Rock International Film Festival at Burning Man. Elfmädchen was funded in part by a Film Arts Foundation Independent Cinema Grant. I received an AB in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University and an MFA in the Experimental Animation program of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). In 2014, I was awarded a month-long residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, where Reciprocity Failure was filmed, and animation for 13th Street Division was developed.