Abuela's Altar

Artist Statement

Abuela's Altar is a charcoal still life that honors both the beauty of Catholic devotion and the grief of ancestral loss, exploring the inherited tension between organized tradition and personal spirituality. Inspired by Churrigueresque altar design, I curated prayer candles, tarot cards, and fragmented relics from my grandmother's life as symbolic anchors of memory and ritual.

Using charcoal's high contrast to mirror the emotional weight of mourning, the composition feels both intimate and sacred. By transforming keepsakes into relics, the altar becomes a visual elegy—a contemporary sacred space grounded in intergenerational memory where cultural identity, spirituality, and grief converge.