deep dive: the angel of nothing that saved my dormant heart
Jayelle Lopez
Medium: eZine
Issues: Identity, Latina, LGBTQ, and Poetry
Project Links
Description
The body of work that I have created in the past year reflects my internal confrontations. Growing up in a conservative Latin environment, there were many adjustments I had to make to meet the expectations of my own culture. As I grew up and came into my own identity, I asked questions that most Mexican families do not take lightly. LGBTQ culture and mental health are two things that seem to create friction in a Latin household. The work I created this year directly links to these questions, as I had to experience my identity and mental struggles in silence for most of my life. These experiences created very deep wounds to which I only applied temporary sutures. Questioning authority is also a taboo for many Latin cultures, but that is exactly what I did. I began to create my own rules that my family slowly began to follow. Now, as an adult, after years of catering to traditions with which I did not agree, I began to create the art displayed as a method of healing. This body of work explores the complexities of internal issues of healing. The themes explored all come from this vulnerability and how I have embraced said vulnerabilities. As I come into my own and open my heart to the possibilities of love. Now, in the middle of my transition, I chose to externalize these experiences. The E-Zine on the site is a chronicle of these experiences in written form. In the form of love letters and mixtapes to the individuals who have given me the opportunities of the heart necessary to take these steps toward loving myself. Inspired by the visual pieces I created in conjunction with the writing as well as the teen rom-coms of the ’90s. This body of work fleshes me out in ways simple words cannot express.
Bio
Jayelle Lopez is a Trans-Woman. A Latina. These identities inspire most of what she does as a creative. Exploring said identities and how she can relate them to her experiences to create work that simply connects to her on a deeply personal and spiritual level is her purpose. Lopez spent a lot of her life asking questions through a gag. The unwilling ears to those questions have given her an opportunity to not only ask the questions she wants, but to also seek and find the answers she needs. Her art has given her a chance to find those answers. As an artist, she seeks to answer questions that she was denied answers to, answers that are necessary for her growth. The conservative Latin environment in which Lopez grew up was the catalyst for her curiosity. She says,” My journey to love myself despite the things I missed for a majority of my life being so pensive I decided to use it as fuel for what I put out into the world. To create a narrative that is personal, yet relatable. In the hopes that the spirit of my work will resonate with anyone who will happen upon it.”