I Am Pregnant
This photograph is part of the "Social Trash" series.
The "Social Trash" series have definitely been the most important artworks that I have created because it is the perfect material hybrid between my two interest, as I mentioned in my artist statement, my relationship with people and with objects in my everyday. Since I moved to New York, about five years ago, I became fascinated with the amount of trash bags that accompanied me along the sidewalk as I was walking. Not really understanding my fascination, I started documenting the trash bags compositions until one day my phone notified me that I ran out of storage space and could not take any more photographs. Still interested in understanding my obsession with trash bags and their various compositions, I went to the pharmacy and printed them all on 4 x 6 inches photo paper and with a white border around them. I taped them all to my bedroom wall and promised myself that I was not going to take them down until I figured out why I was so fascinated with these things. After three weeks or so, I woke up and stared at them for a good twenty minutes and then, all of a sudden, a composition of five trash bags (two big ones and three smaller ones) made me think of a family portrait, to be more precise, my family portrait. Then, I saw one small tan bag surrounded by four bigger white bags and thought of an overprotected child. As I was interpreting each composition, I wrote each one of them down with a permanent black marker on the white border. I took them down and brought them to my sculpture professor to see what he thought about this new concept, he said he liked the idea but he wanted to see me more present, more in that moment and not so distant. With that advise in mind, I started walking around with a roll of masking tape and a black permanent marker and physically started intervening them and then documenting them afterwards. The next class, I did life-size prints of the four that I liked the most and installed them on an alley from the floor up so the relationship trash bag to person remained the same. This is how Social Trash came to be, I have always been a true believer that we are what we consume, but now, I believe more that we are what we throw away. I label trash bags because I think that, just like us, they need to be labeled in order to be understood by everyone else. Trash bags on the sidewalk are nothing else but a portrait of those who consumed what filled them.
The "Social Trash" series have definitely been the most important artworks that I have created because it is the perfect material hybrid between my two interest, as I mentioned in my artist statement, my relationship with people and with objects in my everyday. Since I moved to New York, about five years ago, I became fascinated with the amount of trash bags that accompanied me along the sidewalk as I was walking. Not really understanding my fascination, I started documenting the trash bags compositions until one day my phone notified me that I ran out of storage space and could not take any more photographs. Still interested in understanding my obsession with trash bags and their various compositions, I went to the pharmacy and printed them all on 4 x 6 inches photo paper and with a white border around them. I taped them all to my bedroom wall and promised myself that I was not going to take them down until I figured out why I was so fascinated with these things. After three weeks or so, I woke up and stared at them for a good twenty minutes and then, all of a sudden, a composition of five trash bags (two big ones and three smaller ones) made me think of a family portrait, to be more precise, my family portrait. Then, I saw one small tan bag surrounded by four bigger white bags and thought of an overprotected child. As I was interpreting each composition, I wrote each one of them down with a permanent black marker on the white border. I took them down and brought them to my sculpture professor to see what he thought about this new concept, he said he liked the idea but he wanted to see me more present, more in that moment and not so distant. With that advise in mind, I started walking around with a roll of masking tape and a black permanent marker and physically started intervening them and then documenting them afterwards. The next class, I did life-size prints of the four that I liked the most and installed them on an alley from the floor up so the relationship trash bag to person remained the same. This is how Social Trash came to be, I have always been a true believer that we are what we consume, but now, I believe more that we are what we throw away. I label trash bags because I think that, just like us, they need to be labeled in order to be understood by everyone else. Trash bags on the sidewalk are nothing else but a portrait of those who consumed what filled them.
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