The Day Everything Became Nothing looks to a more obscure history of colonialism. Castellanos whitewashes the pages of an old book which tells the history of the founding of Venice in the 5th century CE: a story of refugees fleeing nearby Roman towns to the lagoon that would become Venice, a swampy geography that deterred the invading Huns. Castellanos universalizes the material and brings this past into conversation with cycles of conquest and colonization spanning geographic boundaries.

The Royal Family is a suite of paparazzi photographs culled from the pages of tabloid magazines from the mid-1990s which documented the lives of the British monarchy. Castellanos recasts these icons of high culture in a humorous yet sinister light: he paints their faces and clothes in black paint, creating grotesque but vaguely recognizable counterparts to the royals. Through his iconoclastic approach, Castellanos delivers a critique of the British colonization of the Americas and the centuries of exploitation the continent has endured as a consequence of European rule.