I have always been interested in Mexican Altars. I see them as small  incredibly beautiful scenarios,  where people  arrange objects in ways that represent their feelings and wishes for  wellbeing and  inner freedom . I was not raised with a religion of any kind. My parents were of different origins, my father’s family was Catholic and my mother’s Jewish, both quite religious and my parents shared a desire to move away from dogmas and inflexibility of any institutionalized way of thinking.  Never the less I inherited and abstract attraction for religiousness and spirituality that was not from a specific religion or thinking system.

In Mexican altars I  often notice  a rebellious spirit that acknowledges the authority of the church  but at the same time defies it through the arrangement of its objects and images. When I lived in Oaxaca in 2003 I noticed this specially in lateral altars where people felt free to take over and arrange things in a way they considered right.  I remember watching persons in church sitting next to “their altar”  and talking to “their saint”  or just keeping it company.