“after my first communion, we went to the bodega” (installation)

2024

DESCRIPTION: Mixed-media sculptural installation. Composed of foam trays, plastic wrap, leather
glove, gold enamel Catholic medallions, glass bottles with metal lids, eucalyptus oil, sorrel tea serum,
communion wafers, communion cups, rosary beads, hair pick, comb, brush, plastic clips, gold hoop
earrings, Polaroids, and astroturf, this work constructs an altar from the materials of both sacred ritual
and everyday life.
Drawing from a childhood spent in Catholic school in Manhattan, the installation reflects on early
encounters with ceremony, hierarchy, and access. The artist recalls moving through gilded
interiors—dancing in pews, wandering beneath gothic arches, surrounded by beauty that could be
seen but not touched. The altar, as a site of power, remained just out of reach.
In response, this work reclaims and reconstructs that space. It builds an altar not from sanctioned
objects, but from those that hold personal and cultural significance—items of care, adornment,
domestic labor, and memory. Influenced by the practices of mi abuelita, the act of assembling
becomes devotional: a way of honoring the sacred within the everyday.
The meeting of materials—plastic and gold, organic and manufactured, disposable and
precious—collapses distinctions between the holy and the mundane. Bottled oils and teas become
offerings. Hair tools and jewelry become relics. The bodega and the church converge. Through this
gesture, the work asserts that ritual does not belong to institutions alone—it lives in the gestures we
inherit, the objects we keep, and the spaces we create for ourselves.