Held Sacred centers hands holding ancestral foods that are understood as sacred carriers of memory, cosmology, and survival. Across many indigenous and diasporic cultures of Abya Yala ( ancestral name for the American Continent), food is not merely sustenance but medicine, ceremony, offerings and relationship. The act of holding these pieces, hands function as vessels, they cradle cacao as a heart opening medicine, corn as origin and body, plantains as nourishment and labor. Remove from kitchens and markets and place int the intimate frame of painting, these foods regain their spiritual dimension. These work challenges the still-life tradition that isolates food from human touch. Instead, it centers relationally, food is always in dialogue with the body, the land and the spirit.

The photographs are about my mother and father making Colombian Tamales for our family. These moments are sacred.

THIS EXHIBITION WILL BE ON DISPLAY AT JULIA C. BUTRIDGE GALLERY AT THE DOUGHERTY ART CENTER IN AUSTIN TEXAS IN SEPT 2027.