Artist Statement
I make from memory. From the quiet corners of childhood where sketchbooks became sanctuaries and movement became language. I was a boy who loved softness, who found beauty in the margins, and who learned to listen to the body when words failed.
My work is shaped by what I’ve carried—longing, secrecy, and the quiet ache of wanting to be seen. I draw from the worlds that held me when the real one did not: anime like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, where magic was a metaphor and transformation was survival. These stories taught me that fantasy is not escape—it is a way to speak when the truth is too tender to name.
I explore how trauma settles in the body, how it pulses beneath the skin, and how movement can release what language cannot. Flamenco, with its duende and deep song, is a thread I follow—not to replicate, but to reimagine. I use percussive movement and gesture to trace the emotional residue of memory, queering tradition through my own lived experience.
Desire, especially between men, is another terrain I navigate—its tension, its tenderness, its quiet negotiations. My work is not about answers, but about asking: How do we hold each other? How do we see ourselves when the mirror has never reflected us fully?
Through prose, poetry, and song, I build vignettes—small windows into a larger interior. Each piece is a question, a memory, a gesture toward healing. I do not aim to impress. I aim to connect. To offer what I have found in myself, in hopes that someone else might recognize it in their own reflection.
Manifesto on Flamenco
My flamenco is…
an instrument in my toolkit—
a color on my palette,
a brush or pencil in my case.
It’s the shape of a gouge in my carving set,
a needle grouping when I tattoo,
a surface I build my visuals on,
a filter on my lens.
My flamenco is
sticky, dirty, sweaty.
It tastes like mango, honey, whiskey,
cayenne, cinnamon, and cock.
It smells like rose, Egyptian musk,
sweat, cum, and poppers.
It is the lived experience
of a gay boy from Miami
whose skin fit like an itchy sweater
in 100-degree heat and humidity—
who walked roads lined with
coconut palms and magnolia trees,
piss-soaked icy sidewalks and hot garbage,
angry men and aggressive rats,
catcalls and the word faggot
screamed from spit-covered lips
in rage and in love.
It is not the flamenco
of a Spaniard or Andalusian,
not of old New York or Miami.
It is a flamenco danced
in Bushwick basements,
in sex clubs, queer spaces,
and East Village gay clubs—
next to House Heads, Voguers,
Ravers, and Breakers
in a cipher in Ridgewood.
It doesn’t wear lunares and flowers,
flecos or two-piece suits,
but leather and lace,
jockstraps and thongs,
crop tops and baggy pants.
It moves to the rhythm
of subway compás,
Tangos of the L train,
and Alegrías on Myrtle and Broadway.
It is ugly and beautiful,
wrong and strong,
fearless and questioning,
insecure and willing.
It is my flamenco—
and I stand by it.
This is my manifesto.