(gentle music) - All my topics have to be related to my background, where I am from.

I'm coming from an Inca culture.

I was born in Peru.

I live in front of a port.

So, you know, it's very active.

We are close to the mountains, to the Andes, and also close to the Amazon as well.

And so we are connected by culture and environment.

I think my town is a lot of proudness about our culture.

I think I normally realized that I was more interested in art when I came out here, at Moorhead.

This is not a very multicultural place.

I couldn't find a job.

And so I began searching for my inner self.

That is when, you know, all my love wake up for art.

Paintings because of the colors that they are, you know, they are alive, they are bright.

I think they speak, you know, about my technique a lot.

I install them here sometimes in my house.

For me it's so important because my paintings take me more than a year.

I really love it to have it with me because I come back, I come back.

I can still, you know, be pushing away.

I can see many people also, you know, just being attached to one media and they keep that.

But that is not how my brain works.

I would like somebody to study my brain probably and to see why I switch so much.

So what happens with me is mostly the theme.

I choose a theme and the theme brings me to the media.

They can be sculpture, they can be ceramic, or they can be paintings, or they can be like a mixed media.

Many times I have to even learn how to do it.

So I have to teach myself.

Material mostly is just a way for me to inform about a specific topic.

I make a lot of things for fun, but I am also very political.

I have one topic about Joe Arpaio the sheriff that used to make all Latinos were pink underwears.

So I make his face using underwears.

So, that was new because I have to sew, I have to embroider.

I never did that before.

So, I get moved by the topic.

(light music) I began wondering who are the people that married, you know, these dictators.

Who were the women that are okay having husbands that, you know, commit genocide crimes.

So I began embroidering their faces.

But I was thinking that they will not work by itself if the men are not behind them.

And also in the scale, it's a compromise, it's an acceptance, this situation of terror.

(gentle music) So, this is my husband's face.

He always was complained that people never say hello to him.

Like he blends so much here and he was like, you know, all the time dropping the topic to me, that "people don't recognize me but I had a meeting with this person."

Like, I have a common face, you know, common features.

You know, many peoples don't have a cultures of themself.

And because we are regular, we are common.

This piece, I think, has the topic of see me, recognize me.

And he, I think, he was happy that, you know, somebody makes something of him.

I think I don't try to ask my viewers to feel guilty or to feel sad.

If they feel something, they will search for more information.

Or they will just look at it as it is, you know, a pleasant object or, you know, art piece and walk away.

I don't feel offended.

It's just something that I really love.

If I can offer just something to touch these topics or to help even to open a communication, I'm happy about that.

- [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.