Welcome To My Faith In You is an artistic collaboration formed by artists Gray Swartzel and Verónica Vega. The duo began their collaboration in 2014 when Swartzel, who had been working with his biological mother for a number of years, moved to New York from North Carolina. Living in the city, Swartzel decided to continue his work in the realm of the maternal and set out to find a woman in Manhattan to claim him as her child and incorporate him into her family. To find his surrogate mother, he posted an ad on Craigslist and proceeded to court a number of women. One of them found the ad unusual and forwarded his information to Vega, an artist living in Chelsea with her daughter and husband.
Despite the lack of a biological link, their meeting constituted a cyber birth brought about by the unconscious powers of need and desire. Vega had recently lost her father and transferred the void of the mourning process into the new relationship. After a period of getting to know each other and upon her daughter and husband accepting him as a part of the family, they began working together. This union constituted a social sculpture, stemming from the fluid potential of human interaction.
Together, each filled the needs of the other as they set about forging a relationship based upon unconditional love, and ultimately, faith in a complete stranger. Welcome To My Faith in You constitutes a form of art manifested through faith in human adaptation and evolution.