thoughts

[aethersky1073]

Safe Space

Clothes, LED Lighting, Self

This piece explores one of the most painful memories from living as a closeted queer person. With this installation, I tap into one of the most hardest moments in my life where my identity and my sexuality became my worst enemy. The term “being in the closet“ is used by LGBTQ+ individuals who are unable to feel at home in the public world. They use this term to hide their true selves and be in pain while doing so. For me, this became a literal fact. I was living at home with my parents and hiding LGBTQ flags in my closet thinking I was safe, but when my mother found those flags and interrogated me about them, everything that was held together by a thin line broke apart, and I was faced with the fact that I was not welcome in my home anymore. I had to move out and explore my identity, who I thought I was as a person, and who I really wanted to be away from those prying eyes.

"Safe Space" is a reflection of that moment where I uncover those suppressed feelings and I sit with them.

[aethersky1073]

Expectations

Metal Rebar, Red Thread, Spool

8’ x 12”

This piece represents the high and low of being a nonbinary person that is assigned female at birth. I live with the high social expectations to live and act as a woman as I present myself as a nonbinary femme. These expectations lead me to overthink my place in the world and feel out of body, and a lot of the time these thoughts lead to depressive episodes where I do not feel like I am in control of my life. I try grounding myself by exploring my femme identity but I can never get grip of the ground.

The metal rebar is shaped as my face as the red thread links with one another, representing the overthinking. The sculpture is hung from the ceiling by red thread, floating with those high expectations, as the thread also surrounds a spool and grazes the low ground with high tension.

[aethersky1073]

Contradictory Structures Idea Board

For this project I will use metal, fibers, light and myself to create a sequence installation. I will create my face shape out of rebar and thread red yarn through the shape to create my facial features. I will add a light source to a box with eyes cut out and create a shadow on the wall of my face.

[aethersky1073]

Untitled

Wood, White Stoneware Clay

For the Kitchen, Pedestal project, I gave a literal interpretation of the concept. When we think of pedestals we think of clean, well-presented shapes to bring an artwork “higher”. To that statement, I created the skeleton of a pedestal that is most commonly seen in the Sculpture classes. I wanted the “naked body” of the pedestal to be the artwork. The clay used to create the shape of a torso symbolizes my naked body infused with the skeleton, creating a conversation between an “unfinished” artwork and pedestal and the simplicity of the first stage.

I installed the sculpture next to the pedestals that were already present in the classroom giving a stage by sage comparison.

[aethersky1073]

Looking The Overlooked - Public Manifesto - Documentation

[aethersky1073]

Looking The Overlooked - Public Manifesto

Mixed Media, Video

This Public Manifesto is a continuation of the previous installation 'Seen But Not Heard'. This performance piece follows myself dressed in colors that contrast the environment around me with news titles that represent the laws and changes that negatively affect Queer and Trans people in the U.S. I wear a painted mask with eerie uncanny makeup, grabbing the attention of the public.

This project is meant to make the viewer uncomfortable and challenge their will to look away, looking at overlooked topics. This project was a personal challenge for me as it's the first public performace piece that I have done.

[aethersky1073]

I Am Seen But Not Heard - Documentation

[aethersky1073]

I Am Seen But Not Heard

Mixed Media

For this project, I wanted to do a social study of sorts. I wanted to know what grabs poeple's attention first, so I am testing that question with colors. I dressed the room using darker colors with fabric, making myself seem out of place with light colored fabric and bright-uncanny makeup, almost like an eyesore. I am testing the viewer's will to look away; to pay attention to something that passes over their heads just as quickly as they take a glimpse. I want to create an uncomfortable, looming feeling, not letting the viewer look away and ignore.

This work holds personal experiences with being seen but not heard. In the same way, I will connect my work with current events and laws that are being put in place that is affecting the queer community; those events that are being seen but not heard. This installation is the first of a series that I have planned with this concept.

[aethersky1073]

SPACES: FINAL INDEX

12. QCQ #3: Structural Tension

13. A Structure Within a Structure: Research 1 2 3

14. A Structure Within a Structure: Materials in the World

15. A Structure Within a Structure: Final 1 2

16. QCQ #4: Concrete Blonde

17. Memory of Spaces (Negative Impressions)

18. Memory of Spaces: Research 1 2 3

19. Memory of Spaces: Final 1 2

[aethersky1073]

Strings of Fear

Acrylic Yarn, Plaster, Clay

9'8" x 37" x 55"

There have been some constant fears in my life that I haven't been able to shake, and I can describe those fears by the way my physical body reacts to seeing or being in contact with a spider: jittery, anxious, and paranoid. This piece has plaster casts from childhood objects, anxiety/depression medications, textures from buildings, and objects from my office job. Each object and texture represent my fear of conformity, my fear of being so comfortable in a mindset or place that I don't move on with my life. Working with the casts in this piece gave me exposure therapy to my arachnophobia, which was ironic to me. While working on a project about my fears, I experienced those fears themselves.

[aethersky1073]

Forgotten House, Remembered Home

Cardboard, Metal, Red String, Hot Glue, Crate

2' x 15" x 10"

This piece explores suppressed feelings about childhood trauma relating to the loss of my maternal grandfather. I was born in Puerto Rico and lived there until 2014. In 2013, my grandfather passed away from Cancer, and although he knew that he was sick before this, he still made great efforts to connect with me and my little brother before he got hospitalized. My grandfather built the house that I lived in, in Puerto Rico. Before getting hospitalized, he continued to make improvements and renovations to the home, and he had me and my brother help. After he got hospitalized, I didn't see him again, and all I was left with was the reminder of an unfinished house that my grandfather built. This piece represents the blood and sweat of my grandfather building a house that was never finished, and is presently abandoned.

[aethersky1073]

QCQ 4 Concrete Blonde

Quote

I would argue that House is fictional in the way that Ricoeur defines the term, because it does not refer in a reproductive way to some- thing that is absent, rather it re-presents the thing, showing something about it that was pre- viously unknown or undiscovered. House is a creative rendering of the architectural space of a house, one that attempts to "remake" it by revealing the rich corporeality of the interior previously veiled by the proper paper clothing of the facade.

Comment

This quote emphasizes the way Rachel Whiteread’s House redefines what it means to represent space in art and architecture. Instead of trying to replicate a home as it once existed, Whiteread uses concrete to capture the negative space inside a house, revealing the hidden physical and emotional traces left behind. This approach reflects Paul Ricoeur’s idea of fiction, not as a copy of something that’s missing, but as a new creation that brings forward what is usually unseen. House doesn’t just show a building, it remakes it in a way that exposes the memory and history embedded in domestic spaces. Just like how people reacted strongly to art that revealed harsh truths about society, Whiteread’s work made many uncomfortable because it turned something familiar into something haunting and unknown. In doing so, it challenged viewers to rethink their understanding of home, memory, and how we represent the spaces we live in, and so the work only lasted a short while.

Question

How does House evoke a sense of loss, memory, or discomfort in viewers, and why might confronting these feelings be important in understanding the deeper meaning behind domestic spaces?

[aethersky1073]

String Of Fears Documanetation

[aethersky1073]

QCQ 3 Structural Tension

Quote

If deconstruction was an attack on structural function and much contemporary architecture is based on the suppression of structure, both continue to operate within a symbolic language of structural expression, in the shadow of Semper’s tectonics.

Comment

This quote emphasizes the ongoing struggle within architecture to move beyond symbolic representations of structure. While deconstructivist and contemporary architecture have both manipulated and voided structural function, they continue to work within a visual language that references traditional structural expression. In comparison, Oscar Tuazon’s work challenges this tendency by creating actual physical experiences of structural instability. Instead of using form to suggest tension or collapse, Tuazon constructs installations that literally embody those forces, engaging viewers in a direct confrontation with the space. His work moves away from symbolism and towards an architecture that is felt rather than just seen, creating a more tactile and honest relationship with structure that recalls Semper’s tectonic principles.

Question

How can modern construction and architectural art move past the aesthetic symbolism to create structures that engage people through real, physical experiences of space, tension, and materiality?

[aethersky1073]

Memory Of Spaces

Idea 3

Idea 3 explores a day-to-day experience of what a walk in my daily life is. I live on campus and every other day I take a 25 minute walk from my dorm to the Art Studios in FIU. The "walk" would include multiple buildings or textures that remind me to take a turn to continue walking the right way. It would start in my dorm and it would end in with a cast of the foundations room, as I took my first art class in the foundations room.

[aethersky1073]

Memory of Spaces

Idea 2

Idea 2 explores the idea that all of my fears are connected, whether they are mental of physical. My body reacts similar to anxiety and depression as it would to my fear of spiders. So I wanted to crochet a big web and encase casts of plaster into the web of objects and spaces that represent my fear of conformity, childhood trauma, anxiety and depression.

[aethersky1073]

Memory Of Spaces

Idea 1

Idea 1 would touch on spaces that feel like "home" to me, spaces of comfort. I would cast textures and objects that feel familiar and comfortable to me, specifically in my dorm. The presentation would be a play in the volume of light. I would hang multiple casts of plaster from the ceiling, shine a light opposite to the wall, and I would create a shadow on the wall.