Artist's Statement

Juliet San Nicolas de Bradley

I am the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of Mexican immigrant women. Our names are Juanita Gomez Torres, Irma Francisca Macias, Maria Guadalupe San Nicolas, and Juliet San Nicolas de Bradley. This is a meditation on our stories. Women have traditionally been defined by their role as mothers in the home with children all around them, but this series looks at my great grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and myself in and around our homes as women in houses whose children have grown up and left, as is the case for my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, and as a woman in a house without ever having children, in my own case.

This series is a generational portrait, a reflection on memory, place, and solitude; on the specificity of place and home and how those spaces themselves become portraits of us.

Ofrendas are a traditional piece of the Mexican Dia De Los Muertos celebration on November 2: altars filled with pictures of the dead, spaces set aside to remember those we have lost and to honor their lives. The images in this project look at how our homes – and in some ways, our very selves - have become like ofrendas.