After a few years as an undocumented immigrant, I found myself paralyzed by anxiety. Until that point, I had been supporting myself with bookbinding jobs taken under the table. Anxiety made it all the more problematic, but I was soon enough offered the opportunity to live rent-free with a magnificent elderly lady, in exchange for company. That treasured arrangement was abruptly terminated four years later during a particularly nasty winter, when anxiety was just barely under control. I couch-hopped for a few months, coming close to not having a place to spend the night a few times. Under such precarious conditions, to resist dropping my budding career as an artist and going to the safety of my family in Brazil seemed like sheer madness.

This personal history came to bear while I considered the nature of assignments in light of my personal work ethics. The result, “Finished Work”, is a video-meditation about the implications of an artistic career for an immigrant woman such as myself in this day and age.