My experience navigating the world of digital collections… A few tips to navigating archives:

1. Start off with no assumptions

Documentation from The Edenic Zone, an immersive outdoor experience manifesting a portal of rest and beauty as imagined by Zona Baari in collaboration with Casa de Coco.

One person would have a hard time trying to save the world, but they can offer a shift in vibration within the micro to positively affect the macro. My belief is there exists many realities on this planet and ultimately varying frequencies we may step in and out of.

Bone – as what is beneath the surface of self. Exists in us all, and what’s behind the mask of skin. The great equalizer. A physical resemblance of our own undeniable truth and vulnerability.

Through the process of collecting these pieces, I noticed myself tapping back into familial practices to take care of oneself. These acts were so deeply embedded into everyday life that I did not question it or even acknowledge it as a practice.

With the understanding that channeling joy is a true act of vulnerability, we voluntarily give ourselves to the motion of falling. Equipped with protection, we learn how to fall so that we know how to collapse gracefully then rise again.

La Limpieza, which translates to “cleaning” or “cleanse,” is one of three short films that exists under the project, How to Turn Poison Into a Meal. It consists of intimate moments between oneself and a shared space to witness each other's movements and sounds.

How to Turn Poison Into a Meal is the name of my Fall/Winter 2020 collection. This project is a way for me to celebrate and remember, as well as using my body as an archive, creating documentation of my ancestors and their practices of reveling in joy and resilience from a heavy existence.

… I intend to recreate.

To photograph and film familial practices that were neither documented nor celebrated, rather, shared through word of mouth and performed together habitually…

Latinx customs, rituals and traditions have withstood countless transformations through their assimilation to the US and back, and the undocumented history of quinceañera practice–a journey I hold quite close to me–is still just one of the many deprived of proper accreditation.