Morenada Mask (Pastel on paper)

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.