My grandmother migrated to the United States from Colombia in the mid nineties, following my parents’ migration a few years prior. During the final decade of her life, she resided in a first story studio apartment on Halloween Boulevard in Stamford, Connecticut. Halloween House’s facade thus consists of taupe siding and linen white features reminiscent of the metropolitan area’s homogenous suburbs. Approaching the installation, however, reveals a trove of unlikely possessions left in the tenant's wake. The interior is fraught with a maximalist display of personalized votive candles, Americana decor, handmade figurines depicting Catholic saints, Colombian artisan crafts, and found Christian devotional imagery sourced from thrift stores, estate sales, and church rummage sales throughout New York City, Westchester County, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. Devotional objects are treated with such exaggerated care and adoration, they permeate every corner of the space, rendering the furniture functionless and home uninhabitable. Empty liquor bottles, unopened medical bills, and cleaning supplies occupy the Halloween House as well. Family portraits, children’s drawings, and toys, suggest the existence of heirs. The resident’s devotion is quantified by their material legacy. Yet, their exaggerated faith in both the Church and American dream are quelled by the physical boundaries of the studio-sized home. In their absence, preoccupations with whiteness, Christianity, and American exceptionalism, endure as permanent neocolonialist fixtures in spaces occupied by working-class migrants. Lingering questions regarding the complex relationship between Latinidad and American identity, generational trauma exacerbated by a lack of adequate living conditions, and a perpetual yet insatiable desire for assimilation persist as well. Inheritance, however, is nuanced. If the byproduct of a life rife with obsession, addiction, and poverty transcends death, so do cherished cultural practices, family traditions, and naive, unfaltering faith. 

The majority of my elder relatives have worked as maids and handymen in Westchester County, Fairfield County, Connecticut, and New York City well into their 70s. My grandmother’s final years consisted of tending to Hudson Valley estates and homes in adjacent towns. In the New York City suburbs, where black and brown people are overrepresented in its low-income populations, my grandmother’s livelihood remained physically and metaphorically nestled within the mansion walls of the ultra-wealthy New York and Connecticut families she assisted. The consumption patterns of impoverished individuals were subject to scrutiny. Immigrants were encouraged to literally and figuratively take up less space, as Latinx maximalist aesthetics were arbitrarily deemed “low-brow”. Migrant jobs were presented as fair and transactional opportunities, when in reality, housekeeping jobs often did not meet the cost of living. Moreover, Western hyper-individualism, framed as a means of achieving ethnic integration in segregated communities, instead resulted in isolation and alienation from one’s own heritage and history. The surrounding affluent community became both her lifeline and oppressor. The inspiration for Halloween House is situated near the coast of Long Island Sound in a neighborhood undergoing rapid gentrification.