Brooklyn, New York | Advisor: Kristine Potter
Michelle Arcila is a Costa Rican/American photographer living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2002 with a BFA in photography. Her work primarily focuses on family, motherhood, bicultural identity, and mental health. She was a recipient of the Photowork Senior Fellowship in 2025 and was shortlisted for the PHMuseum Women’s Photography grant for 2025. Her photographs have been exhibited and published nationally and internationally, and are also in several private collections. She currently divides her time between the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn, NY, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
“Up until this point in my artistic career, I had mainly worked alone and in silence, rarely, if ever, being asked tough questions to reflect on. Having the opportunity to receive dedicated feedback from my Advisor was a priceless experience. It was a masterclass, personally tailored to my needs.”
– Michelle Arcila | ’25 Senior Fellow
Project Statement
“Bosque de Piedras” (working title) explores the abstract aspects of living with depression and anxiety and how this invisible illness affects my children, my creative practice, and my relationship with daily life. Through photography, I look at how my faith (or lack thereof), Latina cultural assumptions, and role as a mother shape how I understand and relate to depression. I do not attempt to create self-portraits in the traditional sense; instead, I portray the fragmented and sometimes distorted ways in which I experience relationships and the mundane rituals of everyday life. The work acts as a fever dream, which is often how depressive episodes can feel to me.
Whenever I was having a challenging time, my mother would say to me, “You wouldn’t be so depressed if you really believed in God.” In Costa Rican culture, Catholicism is such an integral part of our identity; so, as a child, this advice made me feel like I was not only failing God and my family, but that I was utterly powerless. Years later, I came across Jane Kenyon’s poem “Having It Out with Melancholy” and discovered the exact phrase my mother has often said to me: “You wouldn’t be so depressed if you really believed in God.” The poem is one of the most powerful and accurate depictions of depression I’ve read. It filled me with great emotion to learn that the “advice” that had haunted me since childhood had also factored into Kenyon’s life.
“When I was born, you waited behind a pile of linen in the nursery,
and when we were alone, you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.
And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along a spindle on my crib.
You taught me to exist without gratitude.
You ruined my manners toward God:
“We’re here simply to wait for death;
The pleasures of earth are overrated.”
I only appeared to belong to my mother,
To live among blocks and cotton undershirts
With snaps; among red tin lunchboxes
And report cards in ugly brown slipcases.
I was already yours – the anti-urge,
The mutilator of souls.
…….
3. Suggestion From a Friend
“You wouldn’t be so depressed.
If you really believed in God.”
…….
– Jane Kenyon
This poem became the catalyst for me to review my 20-year archive of photography work and begin the process of seeing my life’s work up to this point in a new light.
2025 Senior Fellows: Michelle Arcila | Will Matsuda | José Ibarra Rizo