I am a Latinx multimedia artist that produces sculpture and works on paper to connect old narratives and make new cultural assessments. My childhood was spent moving every few years. My fascination with art began in Germany while exploring Medieval cities. The historical objects that I encountered in this foreign country had withstood time, consequently housing stories within them. Upon our return to El Paso, TX, I came into contact with my Mexican family heritage. My mother and her sisters told us supernatural stories about the Chupacabra, the earth goddess Coatlique, and our estranged family members who practiced voodoo. I took these stories for granted as much as I enjoyed them, as I simultaneously consumed and blended in with American Culture. My senior year, I discovered a talent for sculpture and eventually earned a BFA from UT Austin and an MFA from RISD. While studying at RISD in the northeastern United States, I unexpectedly missed family and the southwest and began to mine Meso-American mythology as a means of soothing my longing for home. What started out as a consolatory process, evolved into a reflexive exploration that compelled me to re-identify with my cultural heritage.

I use materials and studio processes that relate to the concepts within the myths that I explore. Paper, fire, carbon, clay, bone, fabric, burning, stretching, casting, contorting, fusion, each serve their own symbolic purpose. In my Tales of Former Objecthood Series, I construct anew by aggressive means. Using fire to sculpt stacks of paper, I embody the Meso American goddess, Coatlique. Eventually these objects are reduced to carbon and cast to take on another form entirely, reincarnating in the process. Like the shapeshifting Nahual, in my Nahual Series, I use clay to create transitory objects that abstractly depict figures fluidly morphing into other forms. I use Grolleg porcelain, a clay body that has enough water and elasticity to withstand the trauma of being bent, stretched, and contorted in order to take on its form. Bits of fur, fabric and bone emerge from the folds, offering a glimpse of its future and former self. My work plays with changing equilibriums in physical properties and creates objects in transformative acts of material de construction.

In this liminal space, my work establishes an active exchange of metaphorical ideas and methods. These concepts, artistic and cultural, are in constant states of negotiation, navigating the common threads between current existence and ancestral tradition. I use the methods and language of sculpture to braid personal memory and interpretation of these mythologies together. This process grants me a tactile understanding of my own cultural heritage and current experience. The stories encased within my work bring origin and self recognition into question, inviting viewers to blur the lines between the inside and outside, the public and private, reflecting our individual need for cultural sustenance and our fragmented American landscape.

-Terra Goolsby