My camera is a portal to another Mexico, the one situated outside my hometown on the U.S.-Mexico border, moreover, it is a portal into myself. The zoom lens grants me insight into different aspects of my identity as a young Mexican woman in the 21st century. While personal experience is the root of my work, I often engage with statistics, graphs, and histories to support it. In this way, the work resembles the economy on a micro level where individuals act independently while simultaneously being part of an overarching macroeconomy. To translate analytics into visual is the conundrum of the economist and artist in me.
My art is a method of investigation with research being intrinsic to my practice as I attempt to materialize the external forces in our lives from the economy to social norms. I have recycled images of Mexico in the 19th century, newspapers, quinceañera photobooth strips, and my passport to relate development of my country and myself. As my camera is a portal into myself, I aim to expand that portal so others may enter it as well. The viewer meets a fragment of myself in every piece; my body of work continuously acting as a haphazard archive of identity and home.
Jimena recently received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tulane
University in New Orleans, LA.
University in New Orleans, LA.
Major(s): Studio Art, Economics
Minor: Latin American Studies