home and refuge, 2026

photographs from familial archive inside a golden frame, unhatched egg, red light with home accent lamp, grow lamp, mesquite charcoal watercolor on sagebrush handmade paper, seeds, books.  Installation for the five year anniversary of Juana Simona at the site’s living laboratory in Edinburg, TX.

home and refuge took place during the drought spring season of 2026 at the grasslands of South Texas, the ancestral land of the Carrizo-Comecrudo.  Connected by the same umbilical electrical cord, two lights are present in the nightscape signaling two spaces.  A home accent lamp illuminated by a red light sits in front of a picture frame.  On its opposite end, a growing purple lamp sits on top of books.  Across a 6 foot expanse of distance, the two are connected by a linear bonding of home and refuge.  As an ancient act of migration, the two lights orient and map out a passage to and from two states.  Familial archives cue navigation to birth and books signal a place to grow.  Using both light and objects, multiple methods to navigate the night is within reach.

​A red light is a womb holding familial archives of my mother’s image and mine.  As a migratory being, I travel back to this place of home as protection. An unhatched egg collected from my hens sits on the ground, both shelled and fragile.  Photographs act as a visual memory of returning to my place of origin.  

​A curving of four lights point to a tower of books that create a foundation of growth.  Each contributes to ancestral knowledge of self and a study of land necessary for shelter.  In the tower, the top and bottom texts on identity enclose the study    of science. 

Soil is removed and inside the void, seeds fill the cavity.  In the middle, a hand pressed sagebrush paper holds the drawing of two birds interlacing each other.  The markings are a map bringing two into one.  The birds share the same eye and their beaks point to opposing directions.  Their unison is also a birthing of a new beginning.  ​