<sup>Macumba Recipes is a ritual-based work shaped in collaboration with a medium from an Umbanda temple, where offerings are crafted for four reparatory invocations: ancestral reparation, the reclaiming of epistemic agency, the healing of systemic wounds, and the restoration of land and its prosperity. Rooted in the wisdom of Afro-Brazilian spirituality, the work draws from the syncretic currents of the Orixás and spiritual figures incorporated through colonial contact, and is nourished by indigenous botanical knowledge.

Each offering becomes a gesture of reverence, aligned with the nature of the wish and dedicated to an entity or Orixá whose presence resonates with its intent.

I invite you to recreate this offering and participate in a collective ancestral healing.</sup>

    

^{Macumba recipe cards}

^{Installation view}

^{The creation of these objects reflects the deep religious syncretism present in Latin America, showcasing its cultural pluralism and diverse influences. Holy Pareidolia explores the tendency of the faithful to perceive holy apparitions in everyday objects and to cherish them as talismanic artefacts.}

^{UV print on bread}

^{Images of fruits were used as a colonial trope to portray the Caribbean islands as a perfect paradise to be exploited, often appearing in postcards. By transforming tropical fruits—primarily imported from the Global South to the UK—into pinhole cameras, the gaze is subverted, and the exotic commodity becomes the agent, representing the reclamation of agency by the exoticised and fetishised.}

^{But the Skin of the Earth is Seamless is a series in which I sculpt mountainous forms from powdered Latin American food staples—such as cassava and purple corn flour—and photograph them using William Gilpin’s 18th-century principles of the picturesque, which advocate rearranging or improving nature to produce an idealised landscape. The work explores Krista A. Thompson’s idea of tropicalization and colonial extractivism and as tools of imperial control over nature and the other.}

^{Collaged product mascots—often feminised and sourced from the materials used—examine the relationship between commercial iconography and their historical legacies.}

^{Aspex Galley, Portsmouth, UK.}

 

^{Process photos}

^{Museum Offerings, 2025 In this project, I seek to reactivate the original functionality of the Pre-Columbian sculptures housed in the British Museum by offering gifts to the Aztec deity figures on display. I repeatedly bring flowers and fruit, placing them on the sculptures—an action inspired by the defiant practice of the Mexica people, who continued to leave offerings for the Coatlicue statue, unearthed in Mexico City during an 18th-century excavation and subsequently reburied by Spanish authorities for inciting idolatry among Indigenous communities. Through these gestures, I momentarily restore the sculptures’ original role as objects of worship and intervene in their museum-imposed status as artefacts.}