This piece features a family photo from my mom’s 23rd birthday, transferred onto a corroded steel plate. The diptych, showing my mom with two friends, has been nearly abstracted by the rust. I’m exploring the interplay between memory, erosion, and perception—how time distorts what we remember. Faint traces of celebration—balloons, flowers, a wine bottle, bits of cake—emerge through the wear, inviting the viewer to reconstruct the image while accepting its fading clarity. This work reflects on memory’s imperfections, suggesting that while images deteriorate, their essence endures—embodying the tension between preservation and decay as time redefines what we remember.

Ernesto Cabral de Luna

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Ernesto Cabral de Luna is a Mexican lens-based artist working in Toronto. Utilizing both analog and digital processes, he merges experimental techniques with sculpture and installation, printing onto unconventional and manipulated surfaces to emphasize the multi-dimensionality and materiality of the image. His work centers around altering perception through image manipulation – providing new ways to experience recognizable imagery in unconventional manners and outside of their intended purpose. Ernesto's practice is interested in the fragmentary nature of memory, both individual and collective - and constantly seeks new ways to manipulate these alternative histories he is creating. Ernesto received his BFA in photography from OCAD University in 2024, where he received the 2024 Barbara Astman Photography Award and the 2021 Wendy Coburn Art and Social Change Scholarship. A recipient of the 2024 Gallery44 Residency Award and the 2024 Partners in Art's Artist-Direct Grant, Ernesto has exhibited at Patel Brown, Ignite Gallery, Ada Slaight, Xpace Cultural Center, and Abbozzo Gallery. Ernesto was selected for the Toronto Raptors’ 2022 Welcome Toronto Creators Program. He has worked closely with notable companies such as The Toronto Raptors, Coors Light and Walmart Canada. In summer 2024, he was commissioned for a public mural by Luminato Festival at Finch Station, as well as a public billboard outside Artscape Youngplace for Critical Distance Centre for Curators. His work is a part of Casey House Foundation's 2024 Art with Heart auction. Ernesto’s thesis project has been supported through funding by OCAD’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists, The Ontario Arts Council and Partners in Art Canada.