Entrelazadas | Driehaus Museum
“Entrelazadas / Interlaced” (2024) marks the introduction of the pillar structure to my architectural explorations. The pillar shaft is composed of two independent triangular shapes that are structurally entangled in wrought iron work. The abstract symmetry of the pillar is sourced from the wrought iron screens of Puerto Rico’s rejas, a form of security protecting the homes of the working class.
I transform the pillar, a utilitarian form for load-bearing and stabilization that has come to embody unearthly characteristics and meanings, to share my sentiments on migration through the lens of my maternal bond. “Entrelazadas / Interlaced,” a title chosen to reflect my perspective, was prominently featured in my solo exhibition titled “lazos terrenales / earthly bonds,” pictured here. The pillars allowed me to employ Puerto Rican residential architecture as a means for examining diasporic identities, colonial histories, and constructed social orders.
A Tale of Today: Materialities
The Driehaus Museum is characterized by a rich history and an impressive wealth of architectural styles. The site of the Museum, the Gilded Age-era Samuel Nickerson Mansion, offers a rare opportunity to map important and often overlooked histories and genealogies. While the unique design and architecture of the Mansion have been documented and studied, A Tale of Today: Materialities proposes to investigate more deeply the materials that comprise the very fabric of the building.
The materialities of objects and architectural features can link past to present histories in original and compelling ways. They connect different cultures and define cultural boundaries. Never inert, materials are inherently political. They are active participants in the ongoing negotiations that build our present and define our futures. There is a new prominence of materiality in art and it is a clear manifestation of our growing awareness that humans no longer are the undisputed centers of everything and that our world is the result of collaborative processes with other living and non-living, human and more-than-human agents.
Materialities invites artists to select a specific material from the Driehaus Museum to engage in a new materialist dialogue with it. In conversation with guest curator Dr. Giovanni Aloi, the artists will research the histories of their chosen material to produce an engaged, critically aware, integrated response designed to uncover hidden cultural, historical, and ecological networks that bind the very fabric of the house to distant shores, peoples, skill sets, traditions, ideologies, and economic forces.