Eternamente Efímero

Mixed Media Mural, 2019

Hotel Bella Vista, Cartagena Colombia

I recently returned to my eldest daughter’s birthplace to create this mural. The title, Eternamente Efímero, or Eternally Ephemeral, references an earlier exhibit I helped to organize in this same space sixteen years ago, just two weeks after she was born. Like the tides that crash the shore just across the street, this place reminds me of how everything leaves and returns, leaves and returns, both the same and not the same each time.

My first daughter’s story portrait is pasted across the patio from the room where she was born; my second daughter’s story portrait is pasted just outside the room where she was first envisioned. Outside each of the many rooms my changing family has lived or stayed in over the years, a butterfly is pasted with an excerpt of our story in its wings. Additional space is left in these wings as an invitation to future travelers to add their own excerpts, and additional butterflies, materials, and instructions are posted in the communal kitchen.