Artist Statement
Flavors from Home: An Adventure in every bite
I was born in Mexico and food has always played a central role in my life, every time I think about a good memory food is there. In my family memories, my happiest moments, my darkest too, even here in this Home away from home.
In my art, I try to represent the importance of food as part of my life, a recurrent motif that evolves and travels with me wherever I go. Around it is my family, because in Mexico there is only one thing more important than food, and it is sharing it with “La Familia”.
Living in Toronto, where traditional Mexican cuisine can be hard to come by, I’ve embraced the diverse culinary opportunities. This experience has shown me the universality of food and how it can blend cultures, merging modernity with tradition.
For the exhibition, I took inspiration from Mexican Papel picado (“perforated paper,” or “pecked paper”), a traditional handmade decoration present in our most important festivities such as Dia de Muertos, an important celebration where we remember those who are dead by cooking their favorites foods and decorating and create an altar to them which we decorate with said paper. To give life to these pieces I fused this traditional art with modern paper-cut art to create pieces that reflect the vibrant world I experience through food.
Both in my Picture book and the Illustrated series the “Food” motif is a way to come to terms with this feeling of nostalgia and the sadness of being far from my family and my home. In this way, I seek to reconcile with the past and appreciate what I have in this new home that I’ve created.