Ofrenda terrestre (2025)
This installation explores death, with particular attention to the experience of mourning following the loss of companion animals. The artist created this ofrenda, inspired by Mexican, Colombian, and Chicano altar practices, to honor the passing of her beloved dog companion, Lila. By assembling a video installation that combines asemic writing, poetry, archival images, and collage on a screen made of soil and salt, this work opens a portal to experience the ineffable threshold between the dead and the living, between human and nonhuman. Ofrenda Terrestre dwells at this threshold.
While we are accustomed to looking upwards, to the firmament, in order to remember and imagine the dead, this installation invites viewers to direct their gaze downward—to the soil, to the moss, to the roots—where the dead are perpetually transforming into organic lively matter.
An iteration of this installation was exhibited in 2025 at the Rubinstein Arts Center, Durham, North Carolina.
