My thesis project is an animated installation that attempts to imagine the creation and end of reality as a subjective experience. Born as a reaction to racial reckoning and public health crisis, this project serves as a means through which I could try to make sense of the unjust reality we live in.

Through abstract animation, heavily manipulated footage from my phone, and droning sounds, I carefully constructed an imaginary representation of subjectivity as a universe of its own. Inspired by the works of abstract artists and animators such as Norman McLarren, Robert Breer, Roberto Matta, and Jesús Rafael Soto, this piece aims to challenge the audience’s expectations from art and push them to find new ways to interpret and appreciate it.

My process was heavily influenced by my relationship to the tools I used, the images I chose to include and transform, and my general views on life and art. Influenced by philosophical movements such as nihilism and absurdism, the reality I present in this piece might come off as pessimistic, but it still leaves room for beauty and the search for meaning.

The title is a Spanish word that translates to “Mirage”, and it’s meant to allude to subjective experience and the illusion of reality that comes with it. My goal with this piece is to present the audience with this illusion, and encourage them to find their own meaning to it.

The meaning that the piece has to me is informed by my own personal experience and perceptions, so the audience will never know exactly what goes behind every detail. But that is inevitably the case when you get a peek into someone else’s reality, there is no possible way to understand it entirely from such a small glimpse. Instead, the audience is invited to fill in the blanks with their own imagination and perception, to create their own illusion. Ambiguity is encouraged as a tool to bring out the nuances of each spectator’s point of view.