Visual artist Edra Soto is known for her exploration of Puerto Rican vernacular architecture, which is reflective of the island’s history, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is amplifying her work and the work of others for Hispanic Heritage Month.
Soto's bus shelter sculpture is meant for visitors to sit down on and read the adjacent poem.
“A lot of these forms are African forms that came from west Africa and traveled to the Caribbean,” says Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator. “So, it’s also thinking about this transcultural formation that is reflected in its architecture.”
Edra Soto is one of 18 Puerto Rican artists with work featured in the MCA’s newest exhibition, ‘entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico’.
Acevedo-Yates explains, “In Puerto Rico, art has always been a channel or pathway to think about the island’s social and political condition as belonging to, but not part of, the United States.”
In addition to social justice, the exhibition also traces migration patterns.
“Sometimes these stories focus on eastern states like New York and Florida, and they forget about the Midwest, and there is a very important historic migration of Puerto Ricans. I have to say there is no other place in the United States like Paseo Boricua, that has become a cultural enclave of Puerto Rican culture and self-determination,” says Acevedo-Yates.
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Visual Artist Bibiana Suarez’s drawing shows Puerto Rico’s status as small and vulnerable, after Congress refused to recognize the Island’s right to self-determination in 1991.
“I was talking about the island being beaten by unstable political situation, then I was beating the paper with an eraser,” says Suarez, And there are other artists here in the show that also make a point of emphasizing the technical aspects as a way again to speak about a particular issue.”
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‘entre horizontes : Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico’ will be up at the Museum of Contemporary Art through May 5th, 2024.
