Hello! It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Joey, a practicing artist currently based in Philadelphia. While I typically introduce myself as an artist, I am also transgender, Mexican, and Irish. These are inherent to my personality, worldview, and most importantly, my art. I was raised knowing my father’s side of the family- hearing stories about my grandparents meeting in New York, aunts who had become nuns, uncles who make plenty of money, and cousins who go to Ivy League. My mother’s side of the family remained a mystery, forever stuck in some purgatory between Mexico and the United States. I had never thought to ask questions until recently, to ask for stories of what my grandmother was like. When my grandmother immigrated from Mexico, she tried to wipe her slate clean of non-American impurities. She stopped speaking her mother tongue and urged her children to imitate the white man as much as they could. Now, I’m picking up the thread she severed and trying to understand what she had left behind, one story at a time. I find storytelling to be an integral part of our culture, oral, written, or otherwise. However ambitious, I don’t want future generations to be stuck in the haze of confusion I find myself in. In my personal practice, I’m very interested in storytelling across countries and cultures and how histories are recontextualized. Rome undeniably had a rich history. I would love to work with the program to see and understand firsthand how these histories shape its modern inhabitants. Through these experiences and observations, I hope to be able to look at myself and see any similar patterns and gain a better understanding of how those before me have shaped my identity. I’m no stranger to exploring the city as another body in the crowd- one where no one knows my name and I don’t know theirs- this program grants the opportunity to do more than float. While I hold no ancestral roots in Rome or Italy, there is plenty to learn from those who have those roots and the others who are presently planting them.