Reclamation (and Place, Puerto Rico)
Low Relief for High Water
Holding Patterns
In Securities
Access Grove, Soft Stand
Hook Crook, Fair Foul
Matters in Shelter (and Place, Puerto Rico)
Eye of Palm
My Lands Are Islands
In Advance of a Storm
Site Set
Robert Moses He Knows Us
Supports
Hook Crooks
Wedges
Responses to Site
Low Relief for High Water
Holding Patterns
In Securities
Access Grove, Soft Stand
Hook Crook, Fair Foul
Matters in Shelter (and Place, Puerto Rico)
Eye of Palm
My Lands Are Islands
In Advance of a Storm
Site Set
Robert Moses He Knows Us
ONGOING
Supports
Hook Crooks
Wedges
Responses to Site
NEWS
A Gathering in the Making
Sreshta Rit Premnath,
Gabriela Salazar,
Justin Sterling
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Someday Gallery
120 Walker Street, 3R
New York, NY
April 13 - May 20, 2023
A Gathering in the Making
Sreshta Rit Premnath,
Gabriela Salazar,
Justin Sterling
Someday Gallery
120 Walker Street, 3R
New York, NY
April 13 - May 20, 2023
Reclamation (and Place, Puerto Rico)
2022
Wood, burlap, steel, asphalt, structural foam, coffee clay (used coffee grounds, flour, salt)
Photograpy by Sebastian Bach.
2022
Wood, burlap, steel, asphalt, structural foam, coffee clay (used coffee grounds, flour, salt)
Photograpy by Sebastian Bach.
no existe un mundo poshuracan:
Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
Made specifically for the exhibition, "no existe un mundo poshuracán," this work takes the tools of my process for reclaiming used coffee grounds for an air dry clay—a process that includes drying, mixing, and forming—and reimagines them into a material landscape.
Historically, coffee is one of the Puerto Rican archipelago’s most significant crops, and was once cultivated by my grandparents. (My paternal grandparents, Joaquín and Toñita had a coffee farm near Ciales from the '50s - '70s; my paternal grandfather, Clery, was a horticulture professor in Mayagüez.)
The work suggests that reclaiming Puerto Rico’s agricultural independence in the name of past generations as well as those to come is a basic demand at the center of any rebuilding project for Puerto Rico. This autonomy is necessary to create food security, ecological sustainability, and climate resilience in Puerto Rico.
Reclamation—reclamación in Spanish—takes on layers of meaning that it lacks in English, to include a sense of demand or complaint. The work links this demand to both local and diasporic contexts, referencing elements of both Puerto Rican and New York infrastructure through its resemblances to the stilts of houses in the impoverished community of El Fanguito in San Juan, to mangrove roots, to the skyline, and to the hard but ever-shifting groundscape of New York City, where I was born.
Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
Made specifically for the exhibition, "no existe un mundo poshuracán," this work takes the tools of my process for reclaiming used coffee grounds for an air dry clay—a process that includes drying, mixing, and forming—and reimagines them into a material landscape.
Historically, coffee is one of the Puerto Rican archipelago’s most significant crops, and was once cultivated by my grandparents. (My paternal grandparents, Joaquín and Toñita had a coffee farm near Ciales from the '50s - '70s; my paternal grandfather, Clery, was a horticulture professor in Mayagüez.)
The work suggests that reclaiming Puerto Rico’s agricultural independence in the name of past generations as well as those to come is a basic demand at the center of any rebuilding project for Puerto Rico. This autonomy is necessary to create food security, ecological sustainability, and climate resilience in Puerto Rico.
Reclamation—reclamación in Spanish—takes on layers of meaning that it lacks in English, to include a sense of demand or complaint. The work links this demand to both local and diasporic contexts, referencing elements of both Puerto Rican and New York infrastructure through its resemblances to the stilts of houses in the impoverished community of El Fanguito in San Juan, to mangrove roots, to the skyline, and to the hard but ever-shifting groundscape of New York City, where I was born.