ABOUT

Performance + Installation | 24th & Mission, San Francisco

Unrecyclable unfolded on the corner of 24th and Mission in San Francisco’s El Barrio La Misión, where migration, labor, and culture intersect in daily motion. This live installation confronted what is deemed unusable—untranslatable—when we cross into new geographies and identities.

At the center of the piece were real pig hearts—organs capable of sustaining human life in medical transplants, yet here exposed and abandoned in public space. Their presence disrupted the familiar landscape, demanding attention, provoking discomfort, and raising the question: What vital parts of ourselves are treated as disposable when we are expected to assimilate?

This work is rooted in my lived experience as a Latin American immigrant. It moves through the emotional and cultural debris that accumulates when we’re asked to survive by severing pieces of who we are. Using organic materials, spatial tension, and the charged visibility of the street, I created a temporary site for what refuses to be reabsorbed.

Audience interaction was not choreographed—it emerged. People passed by, stared, walked around, stopped to ask questions. Their reactions became part of the piece, exposing how proximity to vulnerability often reveals more about the observer than the work itself.