After Everything Goes, Where Do We Begin Again?

Last July, Justin Favela invited me to join him in prep for his Ulrich Museum—Witchita State University—art show Everything Must go! It’s been two years since I was in his studio working on another show and, I delighted at the notion of seeing him again. The show’s press release read: “Everything Must Go: Justin Favela's Closeout Blowout Re-Grand Opening will be his final exhibition before entering a creative hiatus, offering a chance to pause, look back, and dream forward,” puts into perspective my eight-year journey navigating collaborating with artists through lectures, reviews, curriculum design, and curating. 

Selecting my Justin Favela pinata to decorate

Piñatas, Memory, and Letting go

Looking back on that day, I remember a few things: a myriad of pinatas in his likeness. Family and friends adding their own flavor to each of the Justin-like pinatas they selected. I scan the room and the idea for the essay emerges—what does it mean to destroy the versions of your past selves to make room for rest?  

Months after the show’s closing reception in November 2025, I recall what it felt like to consider that kind of commitment. As I sorted through his supplies to make the tiny bun that developed across our walks and begin to brainstorm on how to make piñata pants into shorts an homage to the Caminata Crew, the last time Justin and I dreamed together. Between his rest and the life I’ve been building since, the time quarantine allowed us to dream has manifested versions of what we hoped for in unexpected ways. 

Piñata designed to look like Justin hung throughout the studio 

The Many Justins: Collaboration, Mentorship, and Becoming

In our over seven years of collaborations—podcasts guest features and guest hosting on my end, his contribution to my show, his guidance and mentorship through arts writing, and participating in his 2023 Family Fiesta in Arkansas—I’ve engaged with a myriad of Justin’s. At the end of 2020, I met the Justin who helped me move in true Latino with a pick-up-truck solidarity; the first time I knew we were friends. This was also the Justin who provided the affirming space I needed as I navigated the ins and outs of curating and marketing within the short window between October of 2021 and August 2022. There’s the Latinos Who Lunch pop culture nerd Justin and the Art People Podcast Justin.  And there’s the very first Justin I met, the one who, when I said my department should ask him and his Latinos Who Lunch co-host to speak on campus, he stated their worth. I treasure that afternoon because it was the first time being a person of my word meant something in Vegas—my former department found the funds to bring Justin Favela and Dr. Emmanuel Babelito Ortega as guest speakers to UNLV’s campus.  

Coming back to that July afternoon of making Justin from quarantine’s Caminata Crew, he catches me telling one of his cousins that he’s the reason I stayed in Vegas, he says that’s a lot. So I sit down as glue is drying on the pinata mid-pants-making, and I ask myself how to better articulate it. Not because it’s not true, more because I’ve transformed so much from the confidence working with him has given me. Not because of how other people receive the work, more because of the inner work our collaborations has invited me to do. 

That inner work informs the delay of this meditation. Slowing down amid the excitement of the time I’ve had to write and teach whatever I want, I find myself unsettled in this staying I finally get to do. The trust he’s placed in me has, undoubtedly, influenced how people work with me—both in the Vegas valley and across the Latinx arts academic networks into which I have slowly integrated. Justin’s ethos reminds me of the homes I left behind in both Chicago, IL, and Portland, OR. His ability to finally slow down solo shows and rest remind me of the responsibilities I have as a scholar-writer.  

Care, Urgency, and What It Means to Have Enough

Despite the temporary reprieve of the Benito Bowl, many of us in the US navigate our day-to-day lives seeking to prioritize care for the people we love. With so much uncertain, what is ‘enough’ has become both haunting and humbling. The urgency is there but, as our bodies remind us, so too is the demand for care. I’m grateful for the months Justin had taken to give me feedback on the earlier draft; grateful for that kind of trust that—in the urgency—gets lost. 

Our safety, our security is at stake in everything we do. I remember how long I worked to get to the place where I too could be slow enough to live, to play, to build. A slow that all too often feels like the theft of luxury.

I still pray for the day that we do not find rest a luxury or spending time with our hands and feet in the dirt as anything other than spiritually necessary. As a teacher, I bring that slowness to my students—a slowness that prompted one class to organize a potluck for homework. A slowness that has chipped away at the walls I built around myself in my first five years in Vegas. And, in the complicated grief and joy of this current moment, I find the new friends I make and the friends I finally have the means to visit breaking down older versions of me, not unlike Justin’s family and friends had done at Everything Must Go’s closing reception. 

Still, in clearing away what must go, like with Justin, I know the important parts will remain.  The Justin who adores his college and hometown friends. The Justin who loves his tias, his mom, as their conversations go from English to Spanish and Spanglish.  These Justin’s shape the Justins that local business owners everywhere he’s organized a family fiesta or held a residency. And given all he cares for, all he gives, I look forward to how a well-rested Justin sustains the heart behind serving the people who, like his family, worked so hard to build dreams of a better life.  

Music, Memory, and Diasporic Joy

That July afternoon, as glue dried on a third of the new pants I was building, a 90s merengue song comes on. The song’s repetition of the word ‘sexy’ reminds me of dancing with my newly arrived Dominican cousins.  There, in the studio, I remember the joy and hope of meeting them, amazing women who, being closer to age than me, offered opportunities to talk about family, newness and crushes in the everyday moments we spent together. 

When the song starts coming to an end, I look up to find his mom smiling at me. I tell her the song reminds me of that moment in my life. The ability to have that conversation reminds of how relieved I had been cooking alongside Latina immigrant women to feed our church’s Latino and Mayan families.  In his studio, like in my classrooms and in the community gardens I’ve tended, I’ve kept the promise I made on leaving my families—the one in Chicago, and the one in Portland—behind. Building a Justin others got to, in a closing party, destroy, I remember what comes when we leave parts of ourselves. Amid the spoils of how we’ve undone when everything must go, joy, laughter and release promise an unexpected new beginning.  

Completed ones, covered and ready to transport.

In this new beginning, I am grateful for quarantine’s Caminata crew Justin having a season. We walked to take care of our hearts—the ones beating in our chests and the emotional imperatives that drive us. In this season, we get to ask ourselves—and each other—what do our hearts need now? Answering this question with a slower pen, and my hands in the clay, I look forward to listening to others’ answers better.