The Morenada mask has always unsettled me. Its wide, staring eyes and swollen cheeks are exaggerated to the point of caricature, but beneath the humor there’s a darker history
When I worked this piece in pastel, I wasn’t interested in making the mask look realistic; I wanted it to feel haunted, almost floating in a dream. The softness of pastel let me blur its edges, as if memory itself was carrying it forward.
For me, the Morenada isn’t just a dance costume. It’s a vessel of contradictions. Festive but heavy, absurd but full of truth. In this drawing, I was trying to hold that tension: the brightness of the colors pulling against the weight of what the mask represents.