This series earned an honorable mention in the 2024 Student Salon at the Art Students League.

This series is about how growing up during my teens and into early adulthood, I was constantly told by others, especially other Puerto Ricans that I met outside of my neighborhood, that I was not Puerto Rican. They wouldn't believe me when I said I was. No matter my features, or my last name, or where I grew up, all they could see was my skin tone. So in this series, I am bringing the inside (the Taino blood running through my veins) out.

This series inspired by the abstract expressionists use of collage, especially Lee Krasner, who was known to cut up old works including self-portraits and use them for collages. I collaged self-portrait photos from an older project to show how each time someone denied me my race, it left me cut up inside. The embroidery was directly inspired by the Taller Boricua, which was founded during the Nuyorican Art Movement. Many artists from that workshop wanted to bring back a sense of ancestral pride within Nuyorican artists, and they used Taíno symbols within their works. The embroidery designs used in this series are taken directly from Taíno pottery and petroglyphs found throughout Puerto Rico. This series was made using a mixed media approach because using one medium was not enough to tackle the varied emotions that inspired this series.