Berkeley Genis

ARTIST STATEMENT

There’s a quiet weight to being told your heritage is history—something behind you, rather than something still breathing. But my art challenges that. Through collage, cut paper, and a minimalistic visual language, I present a living dialogue between the past and the present. Ixpantia, meaning “to present or give notice” in Nahuatl, is my attempt to do just that—to make seen what’s often unseen, to bring forward what’s been pushed back.

I draw heavily from Mesoamerican iconography, not to replicate it, but to reinterpret it through a contemporary lens. Each piece blends ancestral imagery with modern symbolism. These forms are quiet but charged. They speak to migration, assimilation, invisibility, and labor—themes inherited, lived, and felt across generations.

Material is essential to my message. The tactile quality of cardboard, cutouts, and layered collage reflects the fragmented nature of cultural memory and identity. I intentionally leave space—negative space—to let these pieces breathe and allow viewers room for reflection and recognition. Every line, every layer, every absence is deliberate.

My work exists in tension: between documentation and erasure, visibility and silence, survival and protest. It’s political, but personal.

These pieces are not answers. They are offerings. Warnings. Echoes. Ixpantia is my way of saying: we are still here—and we have something to say.