Queer Alienism was an idea borne out of my own experience as a queer person. I was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in a Roman Catholic household; a combination that emotionally and legally reject my existence through the criminalization and ostracism of homosexuality and gender expansivity. Long before I had the vocabulary to voice my truth, the one thing I was aware of was this ever present feeling of exclusion. These works speak to the feeling of exclusion while simultaneously imploring the 'queer world-making' Jose Esteban Muñoz theorized–a variance of modes and dissident acts through which queer people negotiate marginal subjectivity. In my work these acts are represented by the way queer community embraces a rejection of cis-heteronormativity. The aestheticized figuration of the ‘alien’ bears the weight of the marginal experience of queerness. Additionally, these images also begin to archive the individual practices in which we find comfort despite alienation–conversing with a queer visual culture. From the creation of new mythologies and beliefs, to the entanglements of chosen family, I render my subjects as part of a broader community of queer people through a diasporic approach. My goal is to capture and visualize the comfort, pain, trust, and support I have found amongst my queer community living in spite of the undermining of our so-called ""lifestyle.""
