When I think about Curaçao, I see something different from the way people typically speak about the Caribbean. People often see the colorful houses, the beaches, and the diving. And yes, the colors and the water are beautiful, but I always find myself thinking: okay, and what else do you see? What do you feel?
My mother was born in Aruba and grew up in Curaçao. When I visit, I'm going to see family. I'm spending time with cousins. We’re driving around, laughing, hanging out, doing things that don't need to be packaged as an experience. We go to parts of the island that visitors might not think to seek out. I get to see Curaçao as a place where people live.
And the land itself is stunning.
I've seen it when everything is dry and the sunlight bathes the earth. I've seen it in the rainy season, when the vegetation becomes so green and the whole island seems to breathe. One of my favorite moments is being able to see the rain coming. It can be pouring in the distance while you're standing somewhere else watching it approach.
On a past trip we drove through these wide stretches of land and past cave formations. I remember looking at the ground and seeing this incredibly rich color, almost as if the soil were full of iron. It was an ochre color that bloomed into a beautiful terracotta once the skies opened.
Terra Kòrá – (Papiamentu) red earth
Where the soil turns a distinct reddish hue after rainfall due to iron oxidation
Anguilla was another part of the picture, but in a different way. That's where my grandmother's family comes from. My mother and brother described the sand. They say it's so fine and so white that I genuinely won't understand until I go and feel it myself. I've heard the description enough times that I can almost imagine it, even though I haven't experienced it the way they have.
So, at some point, I had these three colors staying with me: terracotta, ochre, and salt-colored sand.
Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to create for Kas di Kos. I wanted it to be an object, not another thing someone had to plug in. It needed to be something you could put on a table and appreciate simply because it was beautiful. But I was intrigued by the idea of beauty having a function. I started thinking about a sculpture that could hold fragrance oil and allow that fragrance to move through a room.
My earliest idea involved stacked stones. I had seen photographs of rocks balanced into sculptural arrangements and loved the idea that you might be able to change the configuration yourself. The stone would absorb fragrance, the arrangement could change, and no two stones would look exactly alike. The uniqueness was enticing but the ritual was not gathering stones.
One day I was flipping through a book about hotels and saw a photograph of a lamp. I was immediately enamored by its shape. Then I realized the lamp was actually round, and the camera angle had made it appear irregular. It was an accidental change in perspective, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the silhouette.
It reminded me of a raindrop just as it touches the earth—still rounded, but beginning to flatten.
And that was it. The rain I loved watching in Curaçao, the soil that changed color when it got wet, the pale sand I'd heard about all my life: suddenly they could exist in one object. The shape of water embodied by stone.
That was the beginning of Awaseru. And, eventually, Monolith.