Coralina Triptych (Camino Umbligo Oro, Mar Sangria, Chiminagua Oya Ogun Thinker)

The Coralina Triptych depicts a series of Mother Mold monuments from the Mama Spa Botanica project immersed within a verdant, tropical sanctuary at the Colonial Florida Cultural Heritage Museum in the historically redlined neighborhood of Alapattah, Miami FL. Composed of intimate waste, environmental ephemera cast in domestic construction materials including charcoal, coral, sea sponges, chancletas, woven palm fronds, palm stamens, palm husks, wall insulation foam, building studs, floor resin, industrial adhesive, interior latex paint, landscape marking paint, spray paint, nail salon paint, synthetic hair weave, human hair, fingernails; the works warn and welcome viewers of the effigy figure's survival strategies. The Mother Mold monuments restore divinity and dignity to survivors of conflicting climate and man made health crisis. Historically, the work imagines survival strategies from intersecting forces of global South liberation mythologies and American colonial legacies.

Coralina Triptych is a fertility effigy figure composed of intimate waste, environmental ephemera and domestic construction materials grotesquely arranged in sedimentary layers of bruised black and purple pigment. The monuments are a triptych installation the artist created after collecting littoral litter for 4 years along the seashore in Miami beach with her daughter. Dead coral, sponges, chancletas, palm husks, palm stamens shells and straws are among the refuse ingredients in the sculpture the artist refers to as "gifts from Yemaya" that were reclaimed on Miami beach after climate pulses including hurricanes, tropical storms and King moon tides.

The process of creating the figure into a sculpture is the result of a birthing justice collaborative reproductive health project called the Mama Spa Botanica. Cast from a combination of pregnant people's body parts including the artist and her BIPOC neighbors (Catherina who appears most frequently in the Mother Mold series), the intimate and environmental debris is formed into the Mother Mold prototype and layered with multiple pours of domestic construction materials.

Chiminigagua Oya Ogbun Thinker is a charcoal figure whose scintillating surface title draws from Muisca and Orisha deities whose domain involves life cycle creation and destruction, as a memento monument of liberation mythologies and astral navigation. The work conjures the Orishas Oya (who rules the dead, is involved with the ancestors, cemeteries, and wind), Ogun (whose patriarchal polarity is present in his healing and destruction abilities watching over war, labor, children and families) and the Muisca Chiminagagua (creator god who made light and Earth by sending two black birds into the skies to illuminate the cosmos). Woven Old Man and coconut palm fronds archive the funerary and domestic architecture traditions of island nations ranging from the Caribbean to the South Pacific where the artist first learned roof thatching membrane techniques that were also used as headstones to commemorate the transition of her ancestors. The pregnant figure is a mirror image with two sides of itself (one pointing up, the other pointing down), recalling the Double Consciousness Infinity Mirror series within the Linea Negra photographs. Their bellies are ripped open and divided at the sculpture's center as the insulation foam expanded and contracted facing the Earth's weathering elements.

Mar Sangria is a grotesque, candy dripping red effigy figure whose luscious spines drizzle coral from a palm frond crown, down to its coral loins. Conjuring the "blood red sea" appearing in syncretic American and global South mythologies, the work's title reminds visitors of the toxic red tide algae blooms recurring along the shores of Florida's endangered wetlands and littoral coastline. Nested within the Colonial Florida Cultural Heritage Museum's sanctuary, the effigy figure also recalls the "Virgen de la Gruta" whose grotto installations of the Virgin Mary are often found in caves, or tropical altars in the museum's archives. Red is a critical color in syncretic mythology departing from the missionary stigmatism of "Christ's tears", the work restores pre-colonial legacies from indigenous cultures of the Americas whose "Rosaries" were originally created in red coral to ward off evil spirits.

Camino Umbligo conjures the intersecting forces of global South liberation mythologies and American colonial legacies with the "Chancletazo", the Legend of El Dorado (Lost City of Gold), and shrunken head mummification techniques of the Americas. Woven Old Man and coconut palm fronds archive the funerary and domestic architecture traditions of island nations ranging from the Caribbean to the South Pacific where the artist first learned roof thatching membrane techniques that were also used as headstones to commemorate the transition of her ancestors. The artist's head appears twice in this work- one crowning through the figure's threshold and the other at it's feet which are replaced by coral growth.

Exhibitions
Coralina Triptych photographs has been included in a Special Projects solo exhibition at the Prizm Art Fair 2023, and in its original context at the artist's solo installation at the Colonial Florida Cultural Heritage Museum 2022.