This path has shown me that the majority of people in this country share a common thread: our ancestors’ labor was exploited to exploit this land. Now, we all deeply feel those consequences: ecological crisis, loss of community, and declining health. Technology has shifted the locus of exploitation to the mind now too, as we fight daily for our attention.
“We must reclaim the word 'labor.' It means to give birth, which is creative, so reclaiming our labor is reclaiming our creativity — entering an embodied relationship with the earth.”
- Dr. Vandana Shiva
Creativity is an act of restoration for the lands and people who birthed us.
Imagine humans like plants, culture like soil, and creativity a miraculous metabolizing process bringing balance to both. Our stories and pain will be the threads from which solidarity is sowed.
After all, the soil will decide if we continue.
📍 Currently based on a farm in New Mexico — land of the 19 Pueblos, Apache, Comanche, Kiowa and Dine — tending to gardens, goats, and beginning an art residency.
About
Hi, I’m Veronica (she/they), an artist, space holder, and freelance designer shapeshifting between mediums, obsessed with the creative act itself. Whether stringing words like beads or dancing in poetry, it’s all a way to remember and animate our belonging to each other and the living world.
Raised in Oak Park, Illinois, and profoundly shaped by years in rural Iowa and Detroit, my work is dedicated to people and land who’ve been sacrificed for profit.
From a young age I wondered: Who are we? And what are our stories? My family’s silences led me to study storytelling at Grinnell College and commit to ancestor work as a spiritual practice.