A first-generation American, Yvette Mayorga was born in Moline, Illinois, in 1991. Her mother had come to America from Mexico, in the 1970s, and life was hard back then. Shortly after arriving, she took a job as a baker in a department store. That job explains her daughter’s candy-pink wall reliefs, which are inspired by the sweet cakes and frostings that symbolized the American Dream and her mother’s pursuit of it. To create these artworks, Mayorga uses bubblegum-pink acrylic that she applies thickly with bakery-grade piping bags. The result is work that explores the intersection between immigration, femininity, and colonialism—but with a dollop of 18th-century French opulence. —Elena Clavarino