VAMPIRAS (the word for female vampire in Spanish) is a series of black and white screen prints, depicting portraits of queer people and sapphic women as vampires, initially originating from an idea inspired by the ‘predatory lesbian’ stereotype but shown literally through vampirism. This stereotype comes from the way lesbian and queer women's identities are deemed under patriarchy, and have historically been portrayed in media; as deviant and wrong, and through internalized homophobia, there is self identification with monstruosity. In vampire lore, they are non-human outsiders trying to fit in the mundane human world, pretending to be something they’re not which translates into the queer experience of camouflaging yourself and pretending to be cisgender or straight or both. In short, concealing a part of yourself like if you were hiding a pair of fangs. Inspired by how it felt growing up as a lesbian in high school around predominantly boy-crazy straight friends in a casually homophobic culture (which is a common experience), ths work is about how we sometimes purposefully and accidentally hide or not want to acknowledge a part of yourself you were directly or indirectly convinced is disgusting. It was reading Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (which was published a decade before Dracula) about a lesbian vampire that I realized you could take out her vamipirsm and keep her queerness and she would still be the same because the way she was written as a villain is the same as queer characters have been written for a homophobic society time and time again. I chose to print in halftone black and white is so they recall newspaper photographs exposing criminals, echoing the organized and systemic persecution in queer history as well as its modern day manifestation in anti-gay countries.
