Alessandra Vertrees
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Xitomatl (Una Ofrenda)

XITOMATL (Una Ofrenda), 2025. Wax or bronze, obsidian, felt. Exhibited in I Grieve Different, Detox Gallery, Chelsea, NY, December 11, 2025 – January 10, 2026.

This is an altar for the mothers who are bruising into absence, and for the last fruit of their line carried quietly in my body. Xitomatl (Una Ofrenda) grew out of witnessing the quiet decline of the women in my maternal line. I use xitomatl (tomato in Nahuatl), a fruit native to Mesoamerica and bound to my maternal heritage, as a devotional object. The sculpted tomatoes function as offerings and as metaphors for both perishability and inheritance: a lineage marked by names I will never know and held now mostly through genetic trace and personal memory. As my mother and elders age, the line thins; its future lives inside my body for only a finite moment.

Xitomatl (Una Ofrenda)

2025 · Wax or bronze, obsidian, felt · Exhibited in I Grieve Different, Detox Gallery, Chelsea, NY, December 11, 2025 – January 10, 2026.

This is an altar for the mothers who are bruising into absence, and for the last fruit of their line carried quietly in my body. Xitomatl (Una Ofrenda) grew out of witnessing the quiet decline of the women in my maternal line. I use xitomatl (tomato in Nahuatl), a fruit native to Mesoamerica and bound to my maternal heritage, as a devotional object. The sculpted tomatoes function as offerings and as metaphors for both perishability and inheritance: a lineage marked by names I will never know and held now mostly through genetic trace and personal memory. As my mother and elders age, the line thins; its future lives inside my body for only a finite moment.

[ADD: photos into the carousel above (wax tomatoes, Detox Gallery install)]