Hilos que me sostienen (Threads That Hold Me)

Collage, acrylic, and recycled material netting on canvas
76 x 101.5 cm

Object History:
Created for the community art project "What We Carry, Where We Stand" by Arts New West (2026) https://artsnewwest.ca/community-art-project-2026-what-we-carry-where-we-stand/

As an immigrant, I arrived in this country carrying things that can't be seen: thoughts, memories, ways of doing things. For a long time, I believed I had to leave all of that behind in order to start fresh in a new place.

This piece comes from a different idea, one that changed how I understand adaptation. We don't start from zero. What we carry isn't a weight we have to set down, it's a resource we can transform and use to build the life we're creating here. The circles in this piece represent those thoughts and those burdens, some lighter, some heavier, all part of who I am. The net that connects them represents the invisible threads between what I brought with me and who I'm becoming in this new place, connections that can't be seen but that hold everything together.

This work is part of my ongoing practice of transforming discarded and overlooked materials into art, a way of showing that what we already have within us doesn't need to be thrown away to move forward. Sometimes it's exactly what sustains us.