My Visual Language

For myself, growing up was emotionally tough. At age 5, I already had to tolerate being tormented for my physique, my appearance and having to hear this torment various times in broken Spanish that I could barely understand. Born in the United States but raised in Dominican Republic, Spanish had been my first language and I had not one idea of the English language or what it even was. My mindset stayed that way for a while, including when I enrolled into kindergarten in the US. I had to deal with what one may call bullying for quite some time, feeling like an outsider from the other kids in my class at such a young age, and feeling like there would be no way to connect with them. 

In my time during kindergarten, I hadn’t learned to speak English for a while and so my favorite class became my art class since there was no need for me to speak or write. My passion for it hadn’t clicked so quickly, but I can recall the exact moment that it did. I had gone on a school trip with my art class to the Museum of Modern Art, which had been my first ever school trip. I held my teacher’s hand tightly, hearing the incoherent buzz of my classmates chatting amongst each other as I felt the desire to join the buzz but not being able to per usual. My teacher and only companion, who spoke basic Spanish and was the person who could communicate with me the most, kept steering my attention towards the art, which eventually after many attempts to ignore her, I did. 

At the time they had an entire Tim Burton display and my eyes fell on the first actual work of art I had ever seen, which was a model from one of the Tim Burton movies. I wondered how someone can create so many things that so many adults admired yet children can as well. After many years I can’t remember which movie the figure was from or if I ever even watched the movie before. Even regarding the fact that at the time I knew nothing of Tim Burton or watched any of his movies, I still felt reeled in by this sculpture, not able to peel my eyes away from it as I analyzed every detail of it even from the glass that encased it. For the first time, I became aware of the idea that people could, in a way, create something that doesn’t already exist. We as a class, along with the other people in the exhibit were looking at a work of art, something that someone created. We all understood what it was and could admire it for what it was, no matter who we were. I no longer felt like an outsider, finally being able to understand something that my classmates could understand as well.

My attention was drawn away from the piece when my class started moving, and only then I realized that my teacher had peeled her hand away from mine long before and was leading the other kindergarteners away. Now at the back of the group, I admired the art pieces around us slowly, mesmerized by the various different things that unfamiliar people created and their beauty. My peers seemed intrigued as well, seeming from how they were looking at the art just as I had, gesturing and speaking more incoherent words in a tone of awe. I felt a certain connection to the piece and I realized that through different creations, I can connect with people that I may not even meet, and people that I may not even understand just as these artists have. 

After that day, I became glued to the concept of creation. Throughout my kindergarten year and my path to learning and improving my english, I would draw on stories or any work that I made, I would paint and make shapes with clay, whether it’d be people, flowers, or just squiggles of lines, I would create. Through that drive to create, I gained admirers of my creations and eventually friends, who at that point I was able to talk in the language that I felt so mistreated by.

For the years in passing, I was able to put my thoughts, my emotions, my words, my mind itself onto paper or canvas through graphite, acrylic, thread, or what may be it. There’s a certain sea of conversations within the silence of simply observing a piece of work and understanding what went into its creation, like the wonderings of our own creator and ourselves as the artwork. Through my drawings and paintings, I am able to convey my struggles, my grief, my internal battles, my joys, my interests and my world in a way that everyone can understand.

This is my visual language.