Kaif Ceramic Floor Mirror

Alejandro Chávez crafts a mirror frame rooted in the Andean tradition with four different vignettes. At the top, people harvest tunas, the red fruit of the prickly pear cactus. To the left, merchants offer warm blankets in a market stall, and to the right, they sell handcrafted masks. Used during the Carnival celebrations preceding Lent, the masks appear in an astonishing array of animals, human, and fantasy faces. Along the bottom, dancers perform the Scissors Dance. Known as retablos, these traditional dioramas feature figures carefully molded from ceramic plaster and painted by hand.