Cosechando Historias: MFA Thesis Exhibition- University of Wisconsin-Madison at Latino Arts Gallery in Milwaukee, WI

Cosechando Historias Linoleum Blocks. 24”x36”. 2026.

Cosechando Historias

Artist Statement

A veces, stories emerge in the quiet gestures of everyday life, al moler el maíz en el metate, o los tomates y chiles en el molcajete. The same volcanic stone that carries the weight of generations, hands that ground, crushed, and blended long before mine. These repeated movements remind me that memory lives in the body, in how we cook, work, and tend to what sustains us. Ahí seguardan y se pasan nuestras memorias e historias.

 In my MFA thesis exhibition, Cosechando Historias, I investigate how cultural practices are cultivated, transmitted and kept alive through embodied ritual, using symbols and motifs as entry points into larger personal and collective narratives. Rooted in printmaking and informed by Mesoamerican traditions and familial stories, my work traces the gestures of the kitchen and of labor—repeating the movements of carving, inking, pressing, mixing, blending, and layering as a way of carrying memory forward. 

In my work, I often return to traditions and our connections to the tierra. The growing and cultivation of maíz: sowing the seeds, harvesting the corn, peeling back the husk, drying the kernels, nixtamalizing with cal, and grinding the grains into masa. The labor-intensive act of making tortillas as our mothers, abuelas, and antepasados did becomes a living bridge between the past and the present, an everyday ritual that keeps tradition alive by repeating the same gestures, leaning into the same stone, and working with the same grains our ancestors used. In these movements, we honor their knowledge, affirm their presence in our daily lives, and embody their stories en nuestras manos by carrying them forward.

Together, the works form a contemporary codex, an unfolding archive of gestures and stories que se guardan y se pasanacross generations, where ancestral knowledge remains present and is activated through the rituals we continue to practice.