Kevin Pedroza

My quilted fabric piece explores the relationship between my hometown and me. I want to evoke the feelings I get while living in my hometown my entire life through the use of cyanotype, textile, and embroidery. I also use sound recordings to give a sense of atmosphere and place for the installation aspect. It's intertwined with a poem I wrote and later vocalized in the sound recording. I like to push and pull information from the viewer. Cyanotype obstructs the image, and the embroidery hides them further. Similarly, the poem in Spanish makes it more challenging to understand if you're not a native speaker. I have the power in my idealized version of my town, where I only allow the viewer to experience what I want them to.

Since I can remember, I've had a love/hate relationship with my town and wanted to enhance that feeling with cyanotype. The process of making this image brings me joy, and if I could create an ideal city with an alternative approach, maybe I could make the feelings towards my town beautiful. The embroidery on my textile piece is significant to me. Mexico has a long history with textiles and using embroidery as Art and a form of expression. I wanted to tie in the sound piece with the fabric piece. One design popped up in my head, and it was the Cempasuchil flower or more commonly known to English speakers as the Mexican marigold. On Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), our people decorate and place the cempasuchil flower on deceased loved ones to bring their spirits home and guide them in the afterlife. I embroidered this flower to mimic the streets that cross my town. In a way, to also lay my feelings for my hometown to rest.