Titi in Window and Luis’s Mother are part of a series of works completed by John Ahearn and his collaborator, Rigoberto Torres, in the Longwood neighborhood of the South Bronx. Starting in 1979 and continuing throughout the 1980s, a time when this community was struggling economically and socially, Ahearn and Torres created plaster castings of their neighbors and friends. The two sculptors would often cast their subjects on the sidewalk, and then display the finished busts publicly on walls in the neighborhood.