New Recording 192

The artist describes their transition from studio work to a role as a creative facilitator, focusing on spirituality and community collaboration. They reflect on their background in spirituality and how it influences their art. Their goal is to engage audiences in participatory performances, emphasizing resistance and sharing tools rather than entertainment. The artist's journey started with skateboarding and punk music, leading to unexpected rituals in Kensington, Philadelphia. The experience has been transformative and reflective of their evolving artistic practice. Let's jump right into it. The first question I like to ask people is, could you just give me your elevator pitch? I'm curious as to how you would describe yourself, try to pitch yourself. What would you say? I think in the last couple of years as an artist, I've been working a lot with sort of like harnessing aspects of spirituality. Sort of like connecting that to social and political reality. In the context of working with, you know, communities that have very existential either challenges or questions about themselves as a group of people. And I think in that context, right, I have abandoned a little bit what the studio work is. And I have taken more a role of a creative facilitator, right? So, you know, I'm designing performances with people. We are co-designing the structure of that performance. We are doing research. We are, you know, we are creating customs together, right? But in that process, a lot of it happens in the context of like providing an opportunity for people to also be in leadership roles and sort of like develop that along the context or whatever we are talking about in the project. And that to me is really important because it sort of gives people the opportunity to develop this sense of, I call it like a sort of like eco-location, right? Understanding where you are in the context of social and the political. I focus in Philadelphia even though I have been in other places working. But I think Philadelphia has so many challenges when it comes to, you know, communities of color that I think that it shaped my practice. I don't think that this would have been the same practice as an artist that I have if I would have been elsewhere. And I have a question that kind of ties into the spirituality aspect of your art. Your art is so obviously driven by spirituality and I'm just curious if that's something that is relatively new to you or if you maybe feel as though spirituality has subconsciously driven your artistic process throughout your life or maybe when did you come to that realization that it was an inspiration for you or a drive for you? I think it has always been, you know, subjectively around my work even though I wasn't really, really aware. I do come from a background on which, you know, my grandmother was a folk healer and, you know, had mediumship. I also, that was really influential in my work but also the entirety of both my family and my mom on that side were and have been always in relationship with spirituality. The person also that, you know, took care of me after school for many years was this, like, Yoruba practitioner that had this, like, massive altar. So I think in my subconscious that has always, you know, taken a really significant role but I wasn't aware and I wasn't intentionally working with that. I think it was later on and fairly recently, I would say in the last six years that, you know, because I have been working with even what used to be my day job, right, I was working with a lot of communities and people and I think there is something around the way that we were colonized and how our aspirations were, you know, affected in a way that is very existential and I think that we allow ourselves to just go to those places when we are talking about spirituality. Of course, you know, I'm talking about it in using it, you know, in a more secular context that, you know, pretty much runs away from religion as fast as possible and as much as possible because I do think that, you know, when people are in contact with their religion, which is something that I don't go into in terms of discussing with people, but I do think that there are some prefabricated ideas of morality that people circumscribe themselves to and I think that when we are talking about spirituality in like states of introspection, people allow themselves for experience, right, and this is based on my experience, allow themselves to liberate that thought easier, right. It allows them also to think about humanness in a very different way than, you know, religion defines what is humane or not in a more specific sense of morality, but this idea of spirituality is so open-ended and people cannot really put a cap on it. If they trust you, then they allow themselves to actually do go deeper and I think for me that is a very important act of resistance, you know, and I think it took a while for me to utilize spirituality because for a long time I was not aware of the fact that in itself and in its practice and existence, right, and the continuity of it sort of like, you know, through an underground reality because of the taboo and many other things, it, yeah, sort of like allowed me then to tap into that and work with that. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, it does. And I'm curious about maybe what your goals are considering your audience. I mean, I would guess what do you hope your audience takes from your work in a spiritual sense and do you feel like you have a target audience or do you kind of hope to appeal to all people in a spiritual way? That's a good question. You know, an audience in the context of art becomes such a weird thing, right, if we are talking about exhibition spaces, right, you know, that question then becomes about your potential collectors and your potential supporters, right, and maybe the critics or maybe the organizations that sort of like they keep the possibilities of what making art can be. And in that sense, I still partake in that, but I have also stepped back from being concerned about that. And in that case, I guess my audience are my collaborators, you know, and for the last performance I did in Kensington, it was a very, very, very small audience that was there to sort of like witness this performance. But if you ask me, the most important thing around that was the group that I was working with, right, because they themselves were trying something very new. And also, even though they are collaborators, they are also the audience to their own process. And that to me was really important, to see them unfolding within this idea that we just explored, which was, you know, was very abstract, it was very subjective, and it allowed us to do that. So that being said, you know, at this point, it goes back and forth, but I think it is really important. And also, because a lot of these rituals, right, in the last performance that I did, sort of like asks people to be participants as well, you know, and that's the question, that we all become audience, right? And I am not concerned too much about who is who in the audience. Of course, you know, at some point, we do have to make choices about inviting specific people. But in that sense, you know, I was inviting most of the people that were really close to me, close to my practice, and that will understand, you know, the fragility of what we were doing. You know, people were putting themselves in very vulnerable positions. We were doing this within a Catholic church, even though this is not a Catholic ritual or performance, right? But again, it was based on trust by the people that, you know, were involved in the project and later were able to impact or, I don't know if impact is a word, but extend. And so, it's a tricky question, and I think the more that time passes, the more I am thinking, you know, about this work in ways of how can I keep inviting even this element of audience, of people in the audience, to become part of it. Because there is a conversation, you know, like I was saying, this work to me has to do a lot with resistance, you know, being taken care of yourself. You know, one of these projects at some point after the whole three years and a half that I was in Kensington working, you know, took the shape of a participatory action research project, you know, and at that point I was, you know, calling in acupuncturists to take care of the people that were part of this. So, again, you know, and I was asking these acupuncturists to send me, you know, opinions about how they thought the patients were doing, you know, not single patients, but the entire group as a whole as a patient, the entire community as a whole as a patient. But a lot of it has to do with resisting and understanding how these strategies can allow people to overcome whatever. I am not there to solve any, I was telling someone the other day, and to be clear also, I'm not there to solve people's problems. I don't think that ethically is a good idea, you know, and I'm very clear about that from the get-go. But it is very important for me to sort of like share my toolkit and what I use, you know, literally. I mean, imagine that we're handy people and I am literally showing you my toolbox to see if there's anything there that you can utilize. And I'm going to explain what each of them do and how you can use them. And in that sense, then it's about sharing. But it's also about sharing responsibility. And I think, right, to also not cross the line of making art that is about entertaining people. And it's about something else. Because then, again, ethically, you enter in a place of disrespect. But politically and understanding how capitalism works, then it has to be about sharing responsibility and not me entertaining you. It's not about that. It's heavy. It's not comfortable. It's often challenging. So that's how I see that aspect of art. Yeah. And, I mean, your artwork, I mean, if you would even call it that, these days, like doing rituals and all of that, I mean, that's such a broad view at art. And I guess I'm curious if you've maybe had a moment of reflection on your artist journey and have been like, who would have thought that I'd be performing these rituals in Kensington, Philadelphia? I mean, how has that experience been for you? And I guess maybe how did your art start in your younger life? It's a huge, you know, it's a great question because, you know, it started, I was a skateboarder. I was like into punk music, punk rock music and, you know, punk rock bands and organizing punk shows and stuff. And it sort of had this more of like rudimentary, not rudimentary, but more practical application, you know, to pay my skateboard, right? So I don't have to pay for a new one or do the art for the flyer. So I don't have to, and it's cool, right? And I think, you know, when you go to art school, I think that, which I think was a really beautiful approach because it was very sincere and it was sort of like, you know, art was happening as a byproduct of a larger thing, which is how I think in Latin America and Puerto Rico, we access art for the first time, usually in the context of religion, you know, and that's the first time that you're probably looking at art. But again, you know, it still has that very pragmatic sort of like appearance and use. And then you go to art school and it sort of becomes this weird thing on which, you know, suddenly from discussing, we get obsessed with the formality of this work. How do you paint? And even though, you know, I went through that process in several mediums, you know, like printmaking and woodcut and, you know, I paint a little bit, but I'm not a good painter or a very slow painter, thank God. But even though I was doing that, it was always without knowing it, I wasn't necessarily being intentional and aware, but I was always going back to the source of this process, right? You know, I started doing a lot of like street art that was very political in nature. You know, this was around the Iraq invasion in, you know, 2002, 2003, or around that time, I forgot. But it had that role. And I think that at some point I did, you know, fell for the thing about, you know, finding a gallery and a blue sheet gallery and being represented, which at some point I was represented and it was great and everything. But it started making me feel that there was something wrong about that relationship. Not that there's something wrong with being represented by a gallery, that's fine. But it stopped being my end. The end of my process started shifting. I was working in a nonprofit around 2012 when I finished my master's in Philly and then I decided to stay in Philadelphia. And I think at the time I was still like concerned about the gallery show and the museum show. But I started working in this nonprofit that I was mentioning earlier on which, you know, I had to redesign a whole exhibition program to make sense for a migrant community. And this was a gallery that was coming from, you know, it was like a huge focus in contemporary art and prestige and, you know, it was like attached to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. So, you know, but to me to disrupt that, disrupting that process and that structure of that, you know, 100 at the time and 20 years old exhibition program sort of like also gave me this insight into other roles that the work can have. And I started like, I started, I was doing exhibition work, but I was doing exhibition work that, you know, was asking you to maybe sit down at a game table, you know, and this piece that I did a couple of years ago had the map of Puerto Rico and you had to play it in order to get out of the island, right? So the goal of the game was to reach the airport and once you did that, you stood up and you left, you know? So I wanted people to be involved and, you know, going back to this whole thing of like taking responsibility in this process, it was something that I was more and more and more interested in pursuing. And by 2018, I think I was able to go full independent as an artist and, you know, and I took on it and I took on just like gathering people and moving and I think I always go back to this joke, not joke, but when I decided to study art, you know, we come from a middle class background and nobody had been an artist, so my dad told me, no, you're not going to work to do like, you know, luxurious objects for, you know, rich people. I was like, damn, but that has never been me. So I think I also took that very personally and very, yeah, close to me to really understand how I could challenge that aspect. And I have grown beyond that, right? And I think that I am very now curious, right, and have been honing more into this idea of like the use of spirituality as a way of, you know, talking about decolonization, talking about rescuing, you know, legacies and knowledge that we have left behind, you know? In Kensington, one of the ways that we were training towards the performance was to learn how to make plant medicine with plants that I brought from the Caribbean but that through the process of colonization also ended up in the Caribbean. Nonetheless, they were able to find their way as, you know, healing tools, you know, so we were doing that as a way of preparing and sort of like protecting ourselves, right? And these are plants that have been used for hundreds of years, if not more. And at the same time, right, even though, you know, the group was predominantly Puerto Rican, but also, you know, we have people that were African American, we have people that were white in the group too. We were discussing this medicine's, you know, very new context and most of them didn't know about them. They didn't know where they came from. So, in a way, this was like giving them a pass to their ancestral land and ancestral knowledge, even if it's something imaginary. Yeah. And, I mean, to speak to, I guess, the privileged community that is the art world, have you ever yourself felt like an outsider given your viewpoint on what art is and what it means to you? And, I guess, how do you ground yourself within that and, I guess, avoid trying to appease the masses? I have a second question. I was just talking to a friend earlier today about that, right? And we have a real responsibility. Yes, I have always been an outsider to that process. I have always been an outsider to many things, you know? I grew up in a town that I didn't have family or relatives, right? I grew up, you know, I came to the art world games, you know, later in university. It wasn't my first choice. So, I've always had this, like, you know, position of being an outsider from it. And I think at some point I might have regretted it, but along the years I think it's something that you embrace and say, like, well, you know, there was something that I was answering, but I didn't write. And I think it's a healthy thing. I think the status quo of, you know, how the art world is playing, you know, even in the context of capitalism and what is that doing is risky and is dangerous. And, you know, again, not to demonize it because I've been part of it and I'll probably be part of it, but, again, it's not my end game. And that, to me, is very important. And if anything, it has allowed me to understand how to, you know, in many ways liberate my process and my practice from that in a more intentional way. You know, the whole Kensington thing started because I was approached to do a mural and I said no. I said I can do something else. I can do a performance with the sole goal of offering people a good memory. And that's it. That's how it started. And I stayed there for, it was supposed to be a six-month thing, and I ended up being there for three years and a half through several funding opportunities and many other stuff. God knows how that happened, but I think it is also one of the healthiest additives for being an artist. I mean, otherwise I would have been a banker. If I'm here, let's do this. Liberate and share the stuff that we don't need. Awesome. Okay, let me see what I got here. Okay. What is the thing that you are most proud of that you have done in the past five years? Wow. So, 2020. 2020. You know, in 2018 I had been working on my own and doing projects and a lot of them had to do with working with communities in South Philadelphia and in the Fair Hill neighborhood in North Philadelphia. But I was invited to this Dia de los Muertos celebration, which I helped plan years before, around 2012, 2013. But at this point we're in 2020 and they invite me to host it. But, you know, I'm not, you know, in Dia de los Muertos they have to have something celebrated in Central America and Mexico and I understand its roots, but I am Puerto Rican. So, it was a thin line and I didn't know how to feel about it. But then the pandemic hit. So, we could no longer gather people. You know, this was clear. We're not gathering people. You know, this used to happen in a closed space and that wasn't an option. And I, you know, I remember calling a friend and telling him, like, this might be the worst decision that I make in my life or the best. And I don't care. And then I decided, you know, to create this, like, massive costume. This thing is like eight feet tall as a way of, like, taking this celebration to people's homes. Like a huge altar? No, a huge, like, costume. Oh, cool. And this thing is like eight feet tall. Wow. Like 70 pounds. Wow. I didn't tell anyone until way after. And some people were like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, what are you, we don't get it. You know, there was, like, even, there was tension within the group. And I was like, well, this is it. You know, I can, I'm, in a conceptual way, I'm taking the altar, right? Utilizing this, like, that spirit from indigenous traditions in the Caribbean that we, that I come from. But also mixing it with everything that I was looking and seeing in Philadelphia. You know, so it has, like, this, like, shrines, like, four shrines in the food. And it has, like, this skull, but then it's, like, a garden inside. And it's this really weird creature with four hands, you know, like, moving hands. Like, you know, giving and taking, giving and taking. Yeah. And I went across all South Philadelphia and then North Philadelphia. Wow. Two things. It coincided with the day that the votes were, like, confirmed for, like, Biden or the Tsun Tsun. So, remember, Philadelphia was the place that decided that. Yeah. So, I'm getting into this suit across Philadelphia with dancers and bands and musicians and cars. The police gave us a ticket, even though we had permits. You know, I called for arts organizations and immigrant activist organizations to just wait for us. Because we had four stops, right? There was a whole structure to it based on, like, indigenous beliefs and indigenous, like, you know, worldview concepts. But we didn't know what was going to happen, how people were going to react to it. You know, we were walking a broad street at some point, you know. Yeah. And even though it was supposed to be a small group of us, people kept walking behind us. And I'm proud of that. I'm really, really, really proud of that. And I think that, I think, was a project that started shifting everything that I do now. Yeah. And, you know, now it's something very different. But I'm still, like, I think that was a project. Everything that happened around it since the beginning until the end was, at least for me, very transforming, including getting into this suit. That's really awesome. Wow. Yeah. This kind of coincides with, I mean, what you're saying, how it coincided with the day the votes were counted. That's kind of insane. I guess. How has your art changed or your viewpoint on what you should be doing changed since the current administration took office? And maybe, like, what trends have you noticed around, I mean, artist friends, artist communities, immigrant action communities? What has, like, the attitude been recently? I think it's good and sad, you know, with the whole genocide in the current administration. I think one of the saddest things is that when you are an artist and you're training as an artist, it is always viewed from the standpoint of understanding change. Understanding that your role as an artist has to do with transforming and changing, you know, status quo. I'm a little bit concerned that I see a lot of fear in a place that has endless resources. You know, you look at artists in Latin America and you look at artists in the global south, like, putting everything on the line. And here people are not putting everything on the line just because they want to keep going to the gym or they want to keep, you know, keeping the relationship with a collector. And that has been a little disappointing. And there is a lot of hope, too. You know, there's people. I think that this is me, what I think should be the trend. And I think I coincide with many people in understanding how we can shape gatherings. And I think that we have to understand that we hold a valuable key towards changing culture itself as artists. Whether that is through the use of an object, whether that is through gathering people to meet with them to understand them and spark, like, conversations. Because I think this whole thing about this information is a great strategy from this administration and from many powers right now in the world. And I think as artists, one of the most important things that we carry is information. A lot of it. A lot of it. Because we are working within classes often. Because we are working within, you know, different groups, different races, different socioeconomics all the time. And I think we have a lot more access than a lot of other professions and a lot of other fields because of the way that we have to move. And I think that it is happening nonetheless, right? I think someone posted today about how many artists had been silenced in the last three years. And there was someone else that was like, yeah, but there's a lot of us and we should gather. And that's important. And I think with, you know, projects that I've done around climate change, like projects that I've done like in Philly, the same project around, you know, Day of the Dead. I think the most important thing at the end of the day is the conversations that happen around that. And that allows people to get into uncomfortable situations. But at the end of the day, allows them to be more aware of the place that they are in. And that to me, you know, many of these people ended up being my friends. They are still my friends. We are still in conversations all the time. They call me all the time. I call them all the time. And that matters right now. Because those networks are the ones, you know, that can allow us first to trust each other. But I think most importantly to overcome and sort of offer a new perspective, a new idea into, you know, how to move past beyond this. This is going to pass. People are going to die, right? And people are dying and people have died. But it will pass. And it's not, listen, the worst that can happen is a whole nuclear thing still on the table. But even the way that I work and the whole structure behind, you know, my mentality and my spirit, which is really important to me, you know, this is one way or the other going to pass. And then, you know, those gatherings and that conversation and those, you know, systems and networks of care need to be in place for when this thing is done. And also because I think there is something extremely important about the use of imagination right now. And I think, you know, I've seen this. The communities that have been oppressed the most have most challenges sometimes to allow themselves to imagine. So imagining an artist being one of the most important roles in that context is one of the most important things. And that rather happens collectively than just within the walls of a museum or a gallery, which already, you know, are difficult and challenging to get into. So that's how I see it. I definitely think what you say, I mean, about including the audience in what you are doing is some of the most powerful, is one of the most powerful forms of art that you could do. Just because, you know, that's how you get people to think. That's how you get people to care. And getting them involved is what makes them a part of it. And that's a beautiful thing. Wow. Let's see here. What can we do now? I guess maybe what is inspiring you right now? And maybe what are you working on right now? Are you still working with Taller Puertorriqueño? Or maybe you want to speak about that? No, no. Even though we always collaborate, I just facilitated Taller being the host of the group of indigenous people from Colombia, the Tezuna people. And, you know, we were able to find them a space there to do one of the ceremonies. So we are always in a good relationship. And, you know, I have a high project with my partner around selling medicines from the folk healing practices in the Caribbean. And they are one of the places that we have them. It was a great project, a very long project, interrupted also by the pandemic. But one that, you know, was about negotiating the presence of Latinx people in North Philadelphia while gentrification is happening. But, yeah, you know, I curated for them. I've done projects. So at this point, you know, we're not working. My wife is like, yeah, we work too much. We need a break. But I'm still there. You know, I'm going Saturday. I'm going to a concert there. And I have a great, great, great relationship with them. Right now I'm excited about – I took a break after a lot of these projects. You know, I have been since 2018 pretty much working a lot without taking too many breaks. So, you know, I've been taking a break to study a lot of things around, you know, spirituality in the context of indigenous people. And, you know, as a way of, again, understanding where we are, where we come from. Because we are currently just discovering what was taken. It's an ongoing process. So I've been studying a lot. And I think that has been really exciting. Sort of confronting that with the work that I've done up until now. And preparing myself for what's to come in the future. Right now I'm studying. I'm writing a lot. I'm working with dreams. And hopefully that will be part of my next steps as an artist. And I'm planning a performance in – I believe it's in June or July next year in North Philadelphia. And that's really exciting too. So I'm working with masks. I'm still working with costumes. And that is always exciting. You go into the Caribbean as much as possible. Exploring plants. Just came back from Mexico. Doing a whole residency around herbalism in the context of colonization. And exploring and talking in that context about my work with other people that are doing amazing work there. And I think those are very, very exciting. And just getting prepared for the next thing, which hopefully is not a six-month project anymore. Your art is so deeply emotional. And so tied to who you are as a person. And I guess I'm curious if what you do is draining at all. Because the self-exploration of coming back to your roots and taking a look and a deep dive at what you and your ancestors have gone through, does that take a large toll on you? Or do you think that performing these rituals and doing these pieces of art invigorates you in a way? Or do you think it's a little bit of both? A little bit of both. But it takes a big toll. And a part of understanding Latin medicine, understanding ritual, understanding all legacies of how to overcome these things, are as important as doing the work. Which is, you know, I've been able to get in deeper into understanding what are those systems of taking care of myself. Because it is really important if you are in any way taking care of others. And you're carrying, you know, these are things that are very, very heavy. Last performance in Kensington, you know, people were talking about, you know, things that were real and that happened. Right? And we're holding all of that. We're holding it collectively. But also, you know, responsibilities come at different levels of engagement, right? And mine is in that specific context is bigger, right? Because I'm putting it together. Because I'm inviting people. Because I'm responsible for them in some way or the other, right? Which is why, you know, before I told you, like, I was also bringing in the toolkit, right? So right now I'm in this process of, like, enriching that toolkit even further, right? Because, you know, if you want to take on larger responsibilities, then you need to have better systems of care, better systems of support. And that's where I am right now. And I'm really happy. You know, I've been, like, traveling and going to places, going to understanding, you know, exercises that, you know, are ancestral to a lot of things. Like, understanding that the world view that has been given to us was not ours and was imposed. And I think, you know, it's almost like quantum physics, right? A little bit. But that, you know, realities and realities and the world views that have been given to us need to be challenged. And that you can call a process of liberation. You can call it a process of development. You can call it a process of decolonization. I don't know, right? But it is important to understand previous realities or alternative realities that allow us to move forward, thinking about the world in a very different way. Because as it is, we have just become great at destruction. I mean, the biggest business in this world is killing people. And how do we run away from that thing? I mean, it's enough. It's enough. We cannot take it anymore. But we need to have something else in place, right? You know, it's like I heard someone say something extremely important the other day. Revolutions are not about toppling a government. That is easy. We can do that in 24 hours nowadays. We can do that through a cell phone. You know, it's what happens later. And that takes a lot of time. And in order for us to move forward and think about this, starting with ourselves, right? Forget about the world. I mean, starting with you, you know? Then you need to understand what those possibilities can be in the context of, you know, living in respect and ethics. And I'm not going to use morality, but ethics. But living, you know, living in respect, living in love, you know, and having, like, real sentiments that can add and generate, but not the opposite. I think we don't even want to go there. You know, we're being pushed by a small group. So we need options. And we need, you know, we need other ways to wake up. We need other ways to, like, sleep better, which are basic. And develop ourselves better as a society, which, you know, we have plenty of tools and resources for that without having to exploit every single corner of this land. Yeah. I guess I'm curious. I heard you mentioned you visited Mexico. What part of Mexico did you visit? Puebla. Puebla. Okay, cool. I studied abroad in Merida. Beautiful. I love Merida. It was, like, probably the best experience of my life. Oh, my God, I bet. I've been twice to Merida. It's so beautiful. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. And I would love to go back. I chat with my host mom sometimes. I'm just like, please let me come back. But, yeah. I guess I'm curious. As a Spanish-speaking artist in Philadelphia, or in general, do you feel as though you are maybe obligated to look at cultures of other Spanish-speaking countries as well? Do you feel as though you being Puerto Rican, people kind of overlook that. You mentioned you were part of Dia de los Muertos. Do you feel as though that's an obligation? Is it something that you're interested in doing? Is it something that you push yourself to do? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I guess let's speak on that. Yeah. No, it's a beautiful question. I think that the one thing, right, the second that projects around nationalities are successful, they are problematic. Yeah. Right? Because it means that you have to exclude others. And in that context, you know, we are not asked too much, but I think I have taken it very seriously to understand former geographies, and not necessarily because I want to go back to those, but because I think it is really important as we build something new. Right? Even this idea of Anahuac, right, which, you know, the Mexica people, you know, their entire land went from Alaska down to Nicaragua. Right? That was their entire playground. Right? So we need to understand what does that mean because, you know, Puerto Rico, for instance, now is being, you know, investigated that, you know, for many years we have been calling the Taino people, which were the indigenous people of the land, you know, including Cuba, South Florida, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and many other islands. Right? And now that's even being challenged. Right? It was like a place of flux. A lot of people were living and going and traveling. I mean, they have found things from the Incan Empire. They have, you know, and Cuba right now linguistically is being explored how many of the same deities were pretty much the same, just migrated, just like, you know, Christianity or, you know, or Hinduism or, you know, Buddhism. So and I think that one of the beautiful things about being a migrant in the United States is that you get to coexist and collaborate with those lines of nationalities that were, you know, inherited from Western society. You raise a little bit. You know? And we get to, you know, that whole thing with the food. Somebody asked me about it once and I said I couldn't have done that in Puerto Rico the same way that I did that here. Now I can take that idea of it, right, and start thinking about how we can do something beyond that. Right? And not be working with the nostalgia of, you know, national, you know, nationalities and all this stuff. You know? How can we start right now thinking beyond that? You know, I've been working with this whole aspect of this, like, spirit of death from Puerto Rico, you know, and now I found out that the same food and the same pretty much character from the Mechita people. Both of them were the keepers of the land of the dead, but both of them had dogs accompanying them as well. Cool. Boom! Then I have to also go to Mexico. Right. And then I have to go to Peru. And then I have to go to the Dominican Republic and understand the complexity of, you know, of what that is. You know, in the roots of their belief systems are very similar, you know, concepts about movement. You know, they were societies that were thinking away from the body, whereas the Occident and Western world is obsessed with the body, especially since the 15th and 16th century on. You know? The academy has been obsessed with the body. You know? Everything is the body. Right? Even now, the body is the battleground. Right? The system wants to control women. The system, you know, movement and gathering and getting together should be the thing that we should be concerned about. How that happens. Right? And in that case, right, I think it was a blessing in disguise to having to migrate and understand that further than being concerned about nationalism. I mean, I see that in the context of Puerto Rico still being a colony, right, which is extremely complex, and nationalism there has a role of liberation. But at the same time, I cannot stop being concerned about the fact that whenever that succeeds, and my liberator from the United States, let's say, we're going to run into another set of problems. Xenophobia. Who's Puerto Rican now? Yeah. And I'm not concerned about that. I don't care about defining that. I pay respects to the people that work towards liberation, but I cannot be obsessed with a social club. Another one. I guess a good closing question. Do you have a goal for yourself for maybe the next five years? Is there something that maybe you've always wanted to achieve? Whether it's something tangible or something sort of mental. There's plenty. I mean, I don't think, you know, liberating might practice what that means at the people level, right? It's not about the egotistical aspect of that, right, and the individualistic part of that. But it's like, how can you achieve that? That's a real question. How can you achieve that? And how long can you sustain that? And can you make that practice sustainable? And that means that it has to do with my lifestyle, the way that I live, the way that my health is, how I treat my family, how I carry them, how I treat my friends, how I gather them, or how they call me, and how we exist in communities. How we can live, you know, how we can contribute to living this place maybe even a little bit better than I found it. And the next five years, you know, we'll probably be around that. And, you know, we're working with a botanical project that people can find this stuff. But also, it will be a place hopefully for discussion and gathering as well. You know, so because I mean, like you said, I mean, five years ago, I didn't know I was going to be here. Yeah. I'm excited for the prospect of not knowing a lot of that. I mean, we need a lot of that. We need a lot of formula for importance. Formalities are important. But so it is important to break them down and find new ones. This is the whole thing about a revolution. Yeah. It's not about coupling. It's about building and contributing and gathering and understanding new ways of doing this stuff. Yeah. But I don't know. You know, it happens through practice with a good set of ethics, I believe. Yeah. I mean, and with the administration that we have right now, you know, trying to silence art as it is. And I think that they're sort of only looking at the formalities. And, you know, stuff like what you're doing is able to, you know, kind of fly under the radar a little bit. Oh, I know what they think about. Yeah, like they can't even wrap their head around it. No, they can't. It's sort of an advantage that you have for sure. Yeah, thanks. That's good. I like that. I always close with asking if there's anything else you'd like to add. Is there any closing statement you have? No, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming here and taking the time. Of course. That's enough. So you're working around here right now? I live around here. Oh, you live around here. But my studio is also in the house. Oh, cool. We created this. We were able to get this house. And it's our project space. And, you know, basically needs to be a doctor's office. And now it's a whole studio. And so we do everything from here. Awesome. Yeah. So that's the factory. Cool. All right. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.