In one of my recent projects I make large-scale photo installations that trace the migratory paths of neotropical birds as seen from the cruising spots of Prospect Park. In these secluded pockets of urban wilderness, queer communities and wild birds share the same ground — both moving through the world unbound by borders, rules, or fixed identities. My collages flips back and forth between these two realms: flight and desire, sacred and mundane , intricately layered into a tapestry of images.

A luminous bird. A used condom decomposing in the dirt. These are the two images at the center of the work — one long understood across cultures as a messenger, a portal, something between the earthly and the divine; the other a barrier between two bodies now dissolving back into the earth it came from. In my contemplative practice, I've come to understand identity the same way: not a solid structure but a flow of images, feelings, and perceptions shaped by territory, culture, and context. When opposites meet without one defeating the other, something juicier than contradiction opens up — a full spectrum of new genders, new relationships to the body and the land, new ways of holding pleasure,joy and sorrow.

Like the neotropical birds I follow, I migrate too: wintering in Colombia building carnival costumes and community around the fantasy of new selves, returning each spring to New York carrying both worlds in the work. I want this work to function as a vessel for anyone willing to look — creating the conditions for awe, for the sacred in unexpected places, for the feeling that transformation is not only possible but already happening, right here, between us.