Project
PREMIUM FRUIT
2019 - 2021
Premium Fruit is a self-portrait that explores identity and memory through a critical lens on colonial stereotypes.
Using techniques such as pattern design, drawing, and collage, I transform my image from subject to object, exposing how the Latin American woman has been exoticized and reduced to a still life comparable to tropical fruit.
The work was created using small-format paper proofs originally developed during my career as a pattern designer. These high-quality test prints were made to evaluate scale and color before launching entire textile collections. By repurposing this material—my own professional archive of patterns—I inscribed the piece with both personal history and the collective labor of design, turning a technical process into a symbolic and intimate act of self-representation.
The work unveils the intimate to confront the collective, challenging the imposed narratives that define and confine our identity.
Through layers of material and symbolic references, Premium Fruit questions the boundaries between portrait and still life, body and object, resistance and vulnerability.
A visual composition of process fragments showing the making of Premium Fruit.
As part of the project, Premium Fruit expands into the digital realm.
The collage self-portrait is recontextualized through a digitally constructed background, amplifying its symbolic charge.
front view
Premium Fruit. Collage made with printed paper designed for textile creation, paper and watercolor. 55 × 50 cm.
Back view
Premium Fruit (back view). The reverse side reveals the use of fruit packaging cardboard, emphasizing the connection between the materiality of the work and its thematic focus on consumption, identity, and global trade.
Close-ups reveal the self-portrait in watercolor pointillism, layered with bright patterned and colored papers. The dots, patterns, and torn edges create shimmering surfaces that blur the line between body and object.
Technical Details
Collage made with printed paper samples originally created to test patterns prior to fabric printing.
Watercolor, cut cardboard from recycled fruit packaging.
Year: 2019–2022.
Dimensions: 55 × 50 cm.