Living in a cultural borderland.

I am Mexicana. My ancestors come from the original wound of mestizaje—a Spanish man and an Indian woman with non-recognized children. For generations, the women in my family struggled to recognize themselves because of their shame for being Indigenous women and the fear of being cataloged as whores if they did what they wanted. That shame and that fear came from the catholic religion, husbands, and priests that cut our tongues with their masculine culture. In this painting, I'm trying to capture my experience of living in a cultural borderland. In my culture, women live on the uncomfortable border of the masculine: between Spanish and English, between social classes, between genders. This painting speaks of my existence, of all the women and cultural roles that little by little I have discovered that I have had to personify. This frontier is an open wound between what has been imposed on me and what I am. I can only express how this boundary feels through painting and writing. Creating art is how I can sew my cultural wounds and find the route to discovering what I want to be: myself. Gloria Anzaldua and her book Borderlands were a big inspiration for this painting but, most important, for my healing path.