Today we hear a lot of buzzwords like “cultural identity”, “person of color”, and “racially mixed.” As new social movements emerge and old ones are revitalized, there is not just a push to reclaim one’s culture but to feel encouraged and proud to do so.

But what if you don’t know what your cultural identity is or if you even have one? Being a racially mixed woman (Spanish, Indigenous Mexican, Norwegian, British and Irish), my cultural identity feels abstract and convoluted. Where my family came from was always more of a vague anecdote than a part of what I identified with.

My recent body of work has begun to explore this disconnect and aims to rebuild how I identify with my past. I’m extremely fascinated with the mythologies and folklore of my heritages, particularly the divine feminine and and women deities. Each piece in this series is a reinterpretation of their complex and powerful story. Breaking down these stories, there is almost always a common foundation from which these cultures derive their own mythologies. This folklore goes on to shape the traditions and customs that we now associate with each culture throughout the world. By researching how societies created these stories, one is able begin to rationalize their own behavior and the mechanics of their minds. All kinds of stimuli can imprint on how and what we associate with different memories of our lives. In a way, I believe the narratives of folklore are simply one way societies can manifest these learnings. How does someone racially mixed, like myself, with no clearly defined cultural identity determine their own ethnology?

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