Crowning 2018 - 2022 تتويج

Exhibited in Many at Craft Contemporary - 2022

Token Bitch — 2022

4 front & back pressed pennies and souvenir penny book. Edition 1/50

Photo Credit: Amina Cruz | Horse lead/ Director: Jesus Hernandez | Horse Model: Izzy

Penny souvenir machine crafted by the Penny Press Machine Company, LLC

Token Bitch, is a pressed penny machine, like the ones often found at tourist destinations around the United States. For one dollar, Craft Contemporary visitors were invited to insert a penny and crank the machine handle – which would smash an original image of the artist, sporting a keffiyeh scarf and cowboy hat in poses riffing on romanticized images of U.S. Manifest Destiny, into the face of the penny. The artist satirically turned her mascaraed image into a literal token, with TOKEN engraved in bold serifed letters on the back of each penny. The participant’s labor is joined with the artist’s to create one of a multiple printed series.

Customized for passed exhibit, Many 2022. During the duration of the exhibit visitors where able to collect all 4 designs for 4 dollars. The penny machine has been discontinued since removed from Craft Contemporary. Raising the approachable price of $1 per collectible design for the public to $50 per design limited edition. 50 pennies were pressed of all 4 designs and an additional souvenir penny book is included for $50 to house the current collection and future designs as the press gets customized to suit other locations.

A Penny For Your Thoughts: A Basketful of Liberty for 1 person — 2022

A Penny For Your Thoughts: Balancing Act for 2 people —2022

Both works copper plumbing, brass chains, hooks, hand metal-smithed copper, 2000 + chain mailed cents and gravity.

Assembled thousands of pennies to create heavy chain mail-like sculptures which the artist and her collaborators have worn in performance works that critique gendered roles, class, race. These works embody the weight of capitalism and critique the American middle-class dream.

Sell Me the American Dream — 2021

Exhibited at the Garage on the Grove, Sacramento, CA Material: Drywall, OSB and soft pine wood, paint box with copper and silver leafed gypsum casts of the artists body parts. Inside the box is an olive tree stump, hammer and steel punch, 10,000+ cents chain mailed together with liberty scratched out, and speaker with an original score. Size: 300” x 144” x 36”

presented by the Garage on the Grove

A Penny for Your Thoughts (performance & sculptures) – 2019

Copper plumbing, brass chains, hooks, hand metal-smithed copper spiked helmets, 2000 + chain mailed cents and gravity.
Size: Dimension Vary

First Edition performance of the sculpture A Penny For Your Thought for 3 people included; metal-smithed copper and chain mailed 1,500 + pennies, activated on the sidewalk and steps of the Sacramento State Capitol with Rachel K. Deane and Rachel Maryam Smith.

The action is to keep your head up, chin up to the sky.
The weight we carry as woman seems invisible because we work so hard to walk the weight with grace. The weight is very heavy to carry alone, but it's easier if we carry our collective weight together. If we do not mobilize ourselves with the weight, the weight gets heavier. If we are not mobilizing ourselves we will be arrested by the weight. Thousands of pennies where collected off the ground by myself and others who started to gift me their collected pennies from walking and moving around. How many people have touched. used, traveled, abondoned and reclaimed the cents for them to get to me. It literally went through time and space spanning a century.

There are few ways I can mobilize myself in the U.S., for my voice to be heard, one way is through class. Capitalism.

How many pennies will it take for our voices to be heard?

Crowning – 2018 تتويج

Hand sewn belly dancing outfit made of recycled leather, spikes and pennies. "When we didn't work we danced."In this performance I use familial rituals of joy and the strength of female energy with in the weight of capitalism and the American middle class dream. I invite a member of the audience to share the weight and dance with me. This work on woman's connection and joy was subjected to the male gaze once men where allowed in the room, allotting the added weight of our sexualized  bodies.


Excerpts from popular music serve as audible markers of personal growth from child to womanhood.

  1. Fairuz, Yalla Tnam Zeina
  2. Najwa Karam, Ana Ma Fiye
  3. Abdel Halim Hafez, Khosara crossed over by Jay Z, Big Pimpin'
  4. Warda, Batwannis Beek crossed over by Aaliyah, Don't Know What To Tell Y
  5. Rage Against The Machine, Know Your Enemy
  6. X, Los Angeles
July 16, 2018    Performed with T.J. Troy on drumbake / percussions, Timothy Maloof on violin and Derek Stein on cello. Feminine Anthem, curated by Thinh Nguyen. A part of PØST Kamikaze Exhibits, Downtown Los Angeles, CA.

Sept. 1 – Oct. 20, 2018    The work was exhibited in The Embodiment of Inclusivity at Xiem Clay Center, curated by Lourdes Jimenez, Pasadena, CA.

Dec. 1 – 16, 2018    The work was exhibited in Underground at the Basement Gallery, University of California, Davis.
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