Inflated hog bladders, salt crystals, steel, charcoal ash, twine

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“Organic in appearance, the metal elements of the sculptures pull their form from the mangrove forests of Puerto Rico, where networked roots protect the archipelago from the effects of annual hurricanes. The artist identifies an entanglement between the mangrove tree and the fugitive condition, with adaptability and transformative capacity integral to the survival of both mangrove and migrant. As Alexandra T. Vazquez writes in her 2014 essay for the American Quarterly Learning to Live in Miami:

By ‘mangrove aesthetics’ I mean to contribute to a Caribbean actuality and poetic and conjure a creative ecosystem that holds land together. [...] And even though mangroves filter the flotsam of the continents, they must thrive in spite of their littering. No matter what is done to them, they still grow up and out into mineral-rich, mangled structures that carry the smells and sounds of antiquity and futurity.

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Installation from Frieze London 2023