About the work

The prickly pear costume sags, no longer green, but a soft, uncertain grey, like a memory that has lost its sharp edges. It speaks of countless small hands, each pulling, stretching, shaping it into something more than mere cloth and foam. The frayed streamers, too, refuse to be just decoration; they are the ghosts of joy, the faint echo of laughter that once filled this dim room. And then there is the bank card, so neat, so unyielding in its plastic certainty, a jarring note against the tender decay of everything else. It is the intrusion of the present, the blunt necessity that demands attention even as the light outside gives way to a deeper, more profound darkness. This friction, between what was loved and what must be paid for, between the soft past and the hard present, is the true subject here.