The solo exhibition project "Who Sustains Our Tables?" compiles a body of work consisting of twelve artworks in various media such as sculpture, installation, action, video performance, photography, and film. The exhibition's concept is to honor the labor of people who work the land in the Americas and nurture communities across the globe. This exhibition explores history from a decolonial perspective, questions the exoticization and otherness of BIPOC communities, and advocates for memory consciousness, decolonization of history, and a return to the roots of pre-Colombian times—the
power of memory.

This solo exhibition project is composed of three sections: Nourishment, Spirituality and Religious Figures, and Labor and Product.

ARTIST STATEMENT
In my artwork, I am interested in vegetables and fruits as products, sources of nourishment, and religious symbols. I portray their mass production, importation, and exportation. To serve their function as products, akin to identification cards, produce has been cataloged and categorized with barcodes displaying their data: their value, country of origin, and names on stickers affixed in supermarkets. Through this exchange of produce for currency, I aim to highlight the laborers who have cultivated the land. From the colonization of the Americas by Europeans to present-day exploitation by government entities and private corporations, the individuals working the land primarily come from indigenous, Afro-descendant, and mestizo origins. Once forced to work the land without freedom, they/we now face a new form of enslavement. Can it truly be called freedom to work without receiving a livable wage? Produce is essential for our sustenance, diet, and existence.

Whether purchased from supermarkets, markets, or even street vendors, we bring these items into our homes weekly. Produce forms an integral part of our households, recipes, histories, ancestries, memories, and families. Thriving in fertile land with appropriate humidity and sunlight, produce in the Americas originates from plantations spanning from Canada to Chile. Residing in Utah, within the desert's harsh climate, I am nostalgic for the origins of these fruits and vegetables, which hail from my homeland, Mexico. My personal relationship with them is intimate; I view each fruit and vegetable body as possessing unique, irregular shapes and sizes, embodying perfect imperfection. Their varied textures, colors, and flavors evoke spirituality and holiness for me. Seeking to eschew exoticism—the othering gaze—and embrace the ritual of the living routine, including eating, I have chosen to focus on produce that holds religious significance in pre-Columbian cultures, such as corn in Maya culture, as detailed in the sacred text, the Popol Vuh.

Secondly, those which are part of our Mexican identity, such as nopales (cactus leaves), depicted on the Mexican flag and integral to the legend of Tenochtitlan's formation (now Mexico City). Thirdly, those that form part of our Mexican daily diet, including avocado, tomatillo, poblano pepper, lime, bananas, and chayote squash. Lastly, certain produce bodies themselves possess symbolic power, akin to weapons, such as chayote squash, pineapple, dragon fruit, and serrano pepper. Sun, soil, seeds, water, wind, light, night, leaves, flowers, bees, insects, pollination, fruits, vegetables, land, agriculture, hands, labor, planting, people working the land, history, plantations, enslavement, roots, inequity, injustice, low wages—all these elements intertwine within my artistic exploration.