Artist Statement
Working primarily in painting, the figures in Cielo’s oil paintings carry their own narratives constructed out of familiar Boricua-aesthetics, a place that is built around them. Caribbean and Queer iconographies create a parallel between US and Puerto-Rican lands that carry a sense of ambiguity in Felix-Hernandez paintings, These bring back the internal through scents, color, and aesthetics connecting back to diasporic-roots. Cielo is responding to past and ongoing colonization–the effects of displacement on the psyche–that have disrupted practices of self-care and have enabled a subconscious form of performativity as a Trans-femme-Boricua. Felix-Hernandez’ work does not aim for definitive depictions of reality, but to attempt to visualize and practice decolonial ways of performing identity and reclaiming narratives that have been lost or forgotten.
