As artist, performer, and musician, New York-based artist Raúl de Nieves constructs richly fashioned figurative sculptures, which reference traditional Mexican costumes, and are in combinatorial interplay with drag, ballroom, and queer club cultures, while playfully nodding toward religious and circus attire. All of his works share a distinctive visual language that draws from Mexican craft traditions, religious iconography, mythology, and folktales to explore the transformational possibilities of adornment and the mutability of sexuality and identity. Fina Vision is one of a series of figurative sculptures de Nieves created in honor of his mother, Josefina, who he frequently venerates as a savior-like figure and who moved her three sons from Mexico to San Diego, California, when de Nieves was nine years old.

The original installation of Fina was populated by several sculptures standing, sitting, or reclining on a mirrored ziggurat, each the embodiment of a different personality trait of his mother. Beauty, fantasy, emotional nourishment, and joy are given physical form through de Nieves’s trademark accumulation of beads, sequins, metal balls, and trim on top of a vintage military suit that can be worn in a performance. Fina Vision is dedicated to Josefina’s sense of foresight, here imagined as a glittering, jewellike reclining figure with a face made of pearly white beads with bright red lips and a black-and-blue outfit with bright pink flowers, gold ringlets, silver paisleys, and sequin-encrusted shoes. As in much of his work, de Nieves transforms highly personal narratives into vibrant amalgamations of form and material, all rendered in an energetic and accessible visual language.