Anel I. Flores

While for all women, our sexuality, gender variance, gender exploration, and body love is viewed by many as residing in the margins, on the fringe and shamed, I work to produce truths of how the butch/queer/nonman/being- “me”- labors to learn, to wonder, to survive, to maneuver, to birth and to celebrate body. With my work I offer an access point for viewers to investigate how sensory, spirit, environment and memory are recalled in the body.

As  a hybrid artist and writer, my story compels the aspects of my artistic practice, in which I question my own authenticity and prove that identity is not static, but enacted, forced, shaped, influenced, evolved and changing, as we peel the layers of cemento smeared over our ever growing walls. I break into the walls which I have erected to protect myself from outside opposition such as homophobia, transphobia, cis-heteronormativity, colonization, sexism, rape, patriarchy and violence. I do not claim to know how or what process is right, but I do know that it is through my use of accessing blood memory, living memory, listening and documenting, I am able to create narrative imagery to claim as identity - for at least the moments it takes me to create them.

In my most current workin progress, Painted Red, a hybrid graphic memoir, I return to my past life, when I didn’t have the tools to understand why opposition existed. Born into the delegitimizing forces of colonization, I aim to highlight the various trajectories I traveled, seeking “worth.” During my process, fingering through scene by scene, I am reminded of the laboring hours, days and years I have spent and still spend rebuilding, repairing, reclaiming, examining and differentiating what is real and what is a trigger, a scar, another brick, in my life’s journey toward identity and gender. My work engages me, the subject and researcher, in the transitional time travel beyond lifetimes, forward and back, of identity, while also exploring how said subject embodies their body, in the present moment, on it’s spectrum. 

I am a lesbian, queer, woman story maker. My work manifests itself as drawings, chapters, and poems. My work is a continuation and evolution of the conversations started by the Chicana movement in art and literature, now infused by latinx, transfeminism, intersectionality, and queer politics and resistance. As a cultural producer, I am driven by a sense of urgency to record and create queer visual and literary work as a continuous reflection and questioning of self-representation, aiming at discovering (and recovering) the history, dynamics, and complexities of relationships with others, self, memory and future.

My work demands that sexuality, gender and our bodies are crucial players in health, existence, spirituality, strength, etc., worthy to be studied, examined, and honored.