Rooted Resilience: honoring ancestors, reclaiming heritage explores themes such as identity, ancestral connection, spirituality, feminist, and chicano theory, assimilation, and the importance of cultural iconography. I will be exploring the ways that each of these themes influence my work. Through a mix of poetry and prose, I’ll be elaborating the concepts that my artistic practice and more specifically my thesis is in conversation with. As a queer, neurodivergent, second gen Mexican American I live on what bell hooks calls, “the margins” of society. Through poetry and my visual creative practice, I’ve carved a space in which I am able to be my most authentic self. One in which celebrates and acknowledges the cultural heritage of my ancestors.