Mina Delgado

About

Mina Delgado arranges insects by their feeding patterns on a cork board, then photographs each arrangement before dismantling it—the only evidence of her work is the timestamp metadata she files obsessively. Her right shoulder perpetually slopes downward from years of cradling a phone between ear and collarbone during autopsies, and she never blinks during the first three minutes of any conversation, a trait that makes even seasoned detectives request reassignment.

Backstory

Moths guided Mina Delgado to her first crime scene at age seven, when she followed their erratic flight patterns through her apartment building's corridors to discover Mrs. Chen's body, already three days into decomposition. Her father, Dr. Víctor Delgado, a forensic entomologist whose research bordered on obsession, had trained her to read insect behavior like other children read picture books, turning their cramped Buenos Aires apartment into an impromptu laboratory where she catalogued feeding cycles instead of playing with dolls. Carmen Estrada, her mother, had abandoned them both after finding Mina's detailed sketches of carrion beetles hidden beneath her school homework, leaving only the scent of her perfume and a note explaining that some children were born to darkness. That night, as sirens wailed outside their window, Víctor whispered to his daughter about the poetry of decay while she photographed the crime scene through their fire escape, her small hands already steady with

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