I consider myself a smuggler sometimes. Often I have to leave my people. I go back and forth with different information from place to place.
I use boxes as a means to transport different ideas regarding transformation and extortion. I consider my boxes as ready-to-make rather then readymades. They have to do with the realistic representation of my subject matter.
When I use appropriated graphics or images, it’s important for me to maintain as much as possible of the original object and its imagery. For example, the first box that I appropriated was a real Corona box that I found in the streets. I painstakingly recreated the Corona logo and silkscreened it on the opposite side of the found Corona box, mimicking the layout of the machine-made original logo.
When creating American Flag, I made a layout by tracing an original banana box on construction paper, and then superimposed the patterns of a real American flag on a stack of the construction-paper-covered banana boxes. The entire stack was then shrink- wrapped onto a palette. This gives the illusion that a cargo of bananas has arrived.
With these appropriations, I hope to give voice to the ongoing struggle and confusions of Latin American immigrants.

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