CENTRAL WHARF PARK
Edra Soto
Graft, 2023
Corten Steel and Polished Concrete
Hailing from Puerto Rico, Edra Soto has delved deep into her cultural memory to create Graft, a collection of four sculptures that serve as benches and celebrate architectural fusion.
The installation beautifully incorporates Puerto Rican palm leaves into a geometric pattern, casting playful shadows and evoking a comforting sense of the island in the heart of Boston.
The motifs found in Graft draw inspiration from Puerto Rican “rejas” (wrought-iron grates) and their West African Yoruba origins, encouraging visitors to explore the complex circulations of architecture and cultural heritage. As she does in many of her works, this internationally recognized artist, curator, and educator invites the public to reconsider the origins of what are often assumed to be Puerto Rican motifs and the impact of colonialism.
ON VIEW
Central Wharf Park
Curated by Pedro Alonzo
CENTRAL WHARF PARK
Edra Soto
Edra Soto is a Puerto Rican-born artist, curator, educator, and co-director of the outdoor project space, The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Growing up in Puerto Rico, and now immersed in her Chicago community, Soto’s work has evolved to raise questions about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism. Soto has exhibited extensively at venues including El Museo del Barrio (NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (IL), ICA San Diego, (CA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY). She has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, the inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award and the US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship among others. Soto exhibited and traveled to Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Cuba as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund. Soto holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree from Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico. The artist lives and works in Chicago.