Looming Objects

Mexican and Central American cultures celebrate death with elaborate, beautifully-decorated altars, sweets shaped like skulls, paper flowers, candles, and vibrant colors. Southern hemisphere cultures invite us to dance with death and to bring death, and those who have died, into our homes and consciousness every year, and in the style of fusion common to many colonized cultures, it has become customary in the South to celebrate death on the day some Christians call “All Saints Day,” a day of remembrance. 

Last year a brilliant El Salvadoran woman named Orquidia Violeta won Portland’s most prestigious costume award in a dress covered in calaveras (skulls) representing women who have died in El Salvador’s civil war (fought with reprehensible US intervention). One of her prizes was a photoshoot with me, and I made some portraits of her in March. 

This year she won first prize in a fundraising fashion show with this seven-foot-tall costume called “Looming Objects,” hung with calaveras representing children who have died either migrating to the USA or in ICE custody. If you have time to click on that link, and if it works, you’ll see a video posted in Instagram that shows how she moves (playfully) in this costume woven together from salvaged yarn, ribbons, textiles, and found objects. Sadly I missed the gallery opening and the chance to photograph Orquidia with this costume.