Paulina Marcelẽno
DIOS ME AMA (GOD LOVES ME) is an installation that explores the intersection of Mexican identity and Catholicism, and how faith becomes inseparable from culture. Through canvas and film, I return to my upbringing in Texas, within a predominantly Hispanic community where religion existed not only in churches, but in kitchens, living rooms, and in the quiet ways we survived.
Oranges appear throughout the space as symbols of both nourishment and weight. They speak to the duality of growing up within Catholicism, where faith can feel both sustaining and unforgiving. In many Mexican households, religion is not chosen but inherited, passed down like language and ritual. Growing up, my mom would always tell me that God loved me. In our home, those words felt less like religion and more like something we lived by.
At a time when Mexican identity and immigrant communities often feel pressured to assimilate or become invisible, this installation insists on presence. Faith, for many families like mine, was a source of strength that made migration, sacrifice, and endurance possible.
DIOS ME AMA becomes both a personal reflection and a cultural statement about how belief, migration, and identity are intertwined. Despite the pressures to assimilate or forget, we remain. We remember. We belong. I am a Chicana artist born and raised in Texas as a daughter to Mexican immigrants.