LUSMERLIN
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Big Bang Baby

Big Bang Baby examines the intersection of ancestral divinity, folklore, and science through an exploration of light, color, and controlled chaos. Fantastical feminine figures, who both create universes and experience their own divinity, are central to these stories. Drawing from Afro-Dominican spiritual traditions of "carrying a mystery" and Native Taíno Zemi goddesses, the work playfully explores transcultural narratives, and humanity's relationship with the natural world. Through this body of work, I pose a fundamental question: What does it mean to be stardust, to embody cosmic origin and creation forces?
Picture
Consecration of Stardust
​Pastel and Acrylic on Wood
2025
48 × 36 in
What does it mean to be stardust? Can divinity be claimed, and not bestowed? This piece reimagines sacred ritual on a cosmic scale, a play between planes, body and energy.
Picture
Floating in Divinity
Pastel and Acrylic on Wood
2025
48 × 36 in
​Resting within a glowing field, she does not perform or seek approval. The work honors stillness as sacred, suggesting divinity as something lived and felt internally.
Picture
The Great Cosmic Hush
​Pastel on Wood
2025
40 × 120 in
Where do matter and energy come from? A glowing field gives rise to fantastical figures. One exhales into space, as if shaping the universe itself. Shifting bodies form a constellation, linking breath, energy, and space-time.
Picture
The Cycle
Pastel and Acrylic on Wood
2025
30 × 30 in
​This painting reflects the repeating cycles that shape life, from planetary motion to daily human behavior. Inspired in part by eclipse projection drawings I encountered in the home museum of Benjamin Banneker, the work considers how cosmic rhythms quietly guide nature, society, and our sense of time.
Picture
Self-Baptism
Pastel and Acrylic on Wood
2025
48 × 36 in
Who has the authority to grant forgiveness and belonging to us? The work imagines baptism as a personal act, an inward commitment to care, accountability, and self-love.
Picture

Anointment of the Ancestors
Pastel and Acrylic on Canvas
2026
90 × 70 in
​Women are central to healing. The healing symbols are drawn from my family’s spiritual backgrounds: my grandmother’s Santería, Taíno indigenous healing practices, and Christianity of my Lebanese ancestors. I reflect on the place in the universe for multiple beliefs and types of knowledge.
Picture
Big Bang Baby
Pastel and Acrylic on Wood and Paper
2026
96 × 120 in
​Composed as a five-panel mosaic recalling altars and churches, the work blends ancient ideas of divinity with contemporary icons of power, transformation, and imagination. Transforming a plane into a three-dimensional world, she is a superhero hovering between dimensions.
The Big Rip
Pastel and Acrylic on Canvas
2026
80 × 333 in
​Space, time, and relationships begin to tear apart. Bodies appear fragmented, drifting in and out of connection. The work asks whether, in moments of collapse, we hold one another with care, or just perform, or cause further harm. Across cultures, stories of creation always carry stories of destruction.

Process and studio photos for The Big Rip

ARTIST STATEMENT

ARTIST BIO

The Sound of Joy is an international public art project by LUSMERLIN, developed as part of her ongoing body of work Big Bang Baby. Presented as a soundscape accessible through a U.S.-based hotline, the project explores the cosmic travel of joy across cultures, languages, and distances through sound. Participants from diverse communities were invited to contribute audio recordings that represent joy in their lives: laughter, voices, nature, movement, music, and ambient sound. These contributions are woven into a 60-second soundscape—a living archive of collective joy—composed through a combination of human and AI-assisted editing.

​To date, the project includes eleven community-sourced recordings from the United States, Canada, Honduras, Spain, South Korea, and the Dominican Republic. The Sound of Joy will launch in February 2026 as a public art component of Big Bang Baby, a body of paintings that narrates fantastical figures and their relationships to creation, divinity, and cosmic origin. While Big Bang Baby visualizes joy as a generative force embodied in luminous, otherworldly forms, The Sound of Joy renders joy as vibration—something that transcends the individual and connects us across space, culture, and time. Together, the project positions joy not as a private emotion, but as a shared cosmic frequency—one that moves, gathers, and unites us.

​Related Proposals for MOMA Artist Party in fiscal year 2026-2027 (July 1, 2026 – June 30, 2027)

*Three distinct Artist Party activations for consideration
*Intentionally Flexible: Designed to complement and extend the conceptual frameworks of exhibitions currently on view
*Each one offers a different mode of public engagement
*Grounded in my practice, and responding to collective experience
*Aligning with MoMA’s Learning & Engagement goals for Artist Party programming. 



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LUSMERLIN (c) 2026 - All Rights Reserved.
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