I originally made this selection of paintings to incorporate into the pattern I created to cover the Christopher Columbus statue in front of the Basilica Cathedral of Santa María la Menor, the first and oldest cathedral in the Americas. The installation was one iteration of the Cloaking series, which challenges the presence of colonial statues in urban spaces, using colorful spandex fabric to conceal and simultaneously bring attention to these monuments, questioning which narratives get memorialized and which are omitted.

Tobacco is of spiritual importance in Dominican Black and Indigenous history and culture, as the smoke was used for communication with ancestors, initially by Taínos, a practice that was later inherited by people of African descent. This tradition survives in afro-centric beliefs and practices in the island.

Since the cathedral is built upon what used to be a Taíno cemetery, I thought of the image of a burning tobacco leaf on top of the cathedral as a poetic decolonial gesture.