Interview by: Denice Flores Almendares
Project: Household

Your project depicts living with agoraphobia and the desire to break free from safe environments, where did your inspiration to create the series come from?

Household was pretty much inspired in the Multiverse theory and the similarities between a Petri dish and a planet; despite the scale difference, there's a universe contained within each one of them that seems unknown, corrosive and chaotic. The pictures, in this case representing a situation, become either micro universes or planets, rendering how we perceive and how we place ourselves in the world, either making a situation massive and hard to alter as a whole planet, or making it into something smaller easier to mutate. At the end of the day both are realities that are meant to be explored by other than optical tools.

What were you trying to achieve when you created the series?

I wanted to question and change the way I was perceiving the world. I wanted to create a new environment and reality. Using Instant pictures was a means for rendering the moment we decide to focus on a single aspect of something, how an instant picture or a snapshot is what it is, unalterable. It instantly becomes an impression of your mom cooking, or your sister or your own workspace, until you look again at the picture and all these thoughts, feelings and memories invade you; you stop focusing on what's in there and it's not about the picture anymore. It's about the instant you alter what it is on that surface.

Can you describe your feelings while you were going through the process of destroying these images?

The process brought a lot of mixed emotions, it was sad, scary and at the same time I felt a lot of excitement and empowerment; I mean, it wasn't easy to symbolically destroy and transform into something totally different the people I love and the places where I felt nothing could be wrong. At the same time, I felt that It shouldn't be so hard to overcome it if I continued seeing every situation as a picture I could manipulate.

WCW Questionnaire:

Describe your creative process in one word.

Chaotic

If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

Architecture history, I'm fascinated by how urban and architectural design have evolved through time, how they're influenced by philosophy, and the impact they have on other mediums and movements.

What is the last book your read or film you saw that inspired you?

Werner Herzog's Into the Inferno. Wonderful narrative, great photography. It's unreal how unstable yet beautiful is this world below our "less chaotic" environment.

What is the most played song in your music library?

My Bloody Valentine's Sometimes. I could listen to that whole album (Loveless) forever.

How do you take your coffee?

Black. I brew my own with some cinnamon in it, but I never say no to a macchiato.