Hija de Bestias [Daughter of Beasts]

Artist’s mother’s cowhide rug, artist’s hair sheddings, ribbon 2024 90 x 87 x 0.625in

Artist’s mother’s cowhide rug, artist’s hair sheddings, ribbon 2024 90 x 87 x 0.625in

Artist’s mother’s cowhide rug, artist’s hair sheddings, ribbon 2024 90 x 87 x 0.625in

Artist’s mother’s cowhide rug, artist’s hair sheddings, ribbon 2024 90 x 87 x 0.625in

Made from my hair and a hide rug my mother was going to dispose of. Titled from something my mother calls me in ridicule, I find an interesting, almost endearing truth to it despite her intention of telling me that I am not being feminine enough. I am the daughter of beasts, I am the daughter of the earth. I am the daughter of all the women who came before me, including the beasts, warriors, makers, writers, weavers, and spinners. 

With this work I’m considering identity, seeing it as a bit of a self portrait, a body, battered, a body, squeezed dry of all she’s got, dissected, and on display, a body, walked over.

In this work I’m simultaneously considering how the sanctity of the natural world has been removed, traded for superficial vanity to be profited from despite the cruelties that are fostered through capitalist markets. Hair, hide, bone -whether from nonhuman or human animals – these materials held cultural significance, historical need, and sanctity in use and display as objects from the earth, cultivated by hands. The commodification of these non-human animal products, erasing their origin then being marketed and produced despite the immense alternatives offered in modern day.