We don’t know when or why but my grandmother pasted a photo of one of her daughters (my aunt), over a shareholder certificate of the GOLD COIN MEXICAN MINING CO signed in 1903 of behalf of MIGUEL DUARTE shares on the capital stock (Miguel Duarte was the father of my grandmother).

I remember it hanging in the walls, and I always thought it was some sort of academic recognition awarded to my aunt, until one day I observed carefully and realized that nothing refers to the feminine figure. I investigated and found that on the shareholders certificates of the time, the oval shape isn’t for a photo but for the logotype of the company. I guess my grandmother matched the oval shapes intuitively and by pasting the photo over the logotype of the mining company, she created a new image: the diploma.

I was surprised then by what I consider a radical gesture, modifying a legal document to construct a personal desire. My intervention as an artist was to remove the original glass and reframe it. The result is the ghost of the image left by dust and time. This project is about different stages that meaning and value can take through time (115 years).