I Travel Heavy

“I Travel Heavy” is a preliminary frame of material explorations with the same title as a future book, and there are 2 forthcoming iterations of the work in locations of personal and collective significance. The project integrates photography, sewing / textile craft, and performance, comprising several elements that fit together : a 2-part dress which is also a window curtain and junk vessel; 2 hanging wall tapestries full of pockets and personal objects; and a gauzy collage which serves as the window, or inner space.  “Traveling heavy” relates to the body and the act of collection, carrying pain, delight, and memory throughout my nomadic lifestyle, as well as reverence for the resilience and creativity of those who are unhoused by choice or circumstance. 

Envisioned as a semifunctional pocket archive system related to nomadic life, the project considers the immediacy of place and local exploration. The photographic images in this piece are from autumn 2025, including elements of a trashed motel in Grants, New Mexico, and the nighttime, empty infrastructure of the markets in Mérida, Yucatan. These are micro-explorations within greater layers of travel, and the stark architectural elements draw upon my “stuffed windows” body of work to provide remnant frames for the goings-on of the recent or distant past. I often feel most at home in those forgotten spaces. 

The photos are transferred to fabrics with a solar process similar to cyanotype, and the act of inversion, ink and washing extends the consideration of the images, making them both precious and replicable. They become the skin of an array of lined pockets on the 2 wall panels, framing and protecting the physical and emotional items needed for many phases of nomadic living. Denim signifies durability and labor, and plastic trash elements from the end-of-day produce market in Tlalpan were used to stencil it. 

Finally, the 2 pieces of the dress complete the work and place myself within it directly, both protected and exposed: the mauve taffeta speaks to a timed-out aesthetic as well as ideas about the ephemeral yet self-made journey of Cinderella; the denim dress train contains plastic bottles, things I consumed, materials I couldn’t resist picking up on the street but cannot keep, from the immediate environment of Tlalpan, CDMX. The heaviness of dragging the collection in a walk across the Casa Lu Sur grounds is also an act of acceptance, slowness, and purpose.