This essay grows out of a recent making process I’ve been part of -  something between a challenge, a workshop, and a residency -  built around a documentary following six artists as we attempt twelve works together and alone. Working with collaborators made the theme of home feel almost gentle, something we could approach side-by-side without having to dig too deep. But the moment I had to face the theme on my own, it shifted. It asked for something more personal, something I’ve avoided for years.

This work was born in mourning — a visual elegy composed after the passing of my uncle. In his honour, I took on his name, completing the pseudonym Diablo Santana — an act of personal mythology, binding grief to legacy. This piece became a portal through which I processed that rupture, not just as personal loss, but as a meditation on sacrifice, ancestry, and the existential costs of being.