Central Park, Doris C. Freedman Plaza, 5th Avenue, NY 10019, New York, United States
Open: Dawn to Dusk, daily
Thu 5 Sep 2024 to Sun 24 Aug 2025
Central Park, Doris C. Freedman Plaza, 5th Avenue, NY 10019 Edra Soto: Graft
Dawn to Dusk, daily
Artist: Edra Soto
Edra Soto (b. 1971, Puerto Rico) explores the relationship between our private, interior lives and shared public history and culture. Graft is the latest in an ongoing series of installations based on rejas, wrought iron screens frequently seen outside homes in Puerto Rico. Rejas often feature repeating geometric motifs that can be traced to West Africa’s Yoruba symbol systems, in contrast to the Spanish architecture celebrated in official Puerto Rican tourism. Graft investigates how Puerto Rican cultural memory often masks the Black heritage of the island as folklore.
Made from corten steel and terrazzo, Graft is a monument to working class Puerto Rican communities and Soto’s first sculpture inspired by a specific house façade. Tables and seating invite visitors to enjoy a moment of rest, connection, and reflection. The sculpture creates a threshold, with one side representing a home’s exterior; the other, the more intimate atmosphere of an interior. The work’s title addresses Soto’s complex sentiments around migrating to Chicago while remaining connected to Puerto Rico. For Soto, feelings of dislocation are compounded by the island’s ambiguous status as an unincorporated territory of the United States. Graft opens connections between Puerto Rican communities across the city and reminds us of the centrality of the Caribbean to the history of New York City and the United States.
- Melanie Kress, Senior Curator, Public Art Fund
Edra Soto: Graft is curated by Public Art Fund Senior Curator Melanie Kress with support from Public Art Fund Assistant Curator Jenée-Daria Strand, and initial development by former Public Art Fund Senior Curator Allison Glenn.
About the Artist
Edra Soto (b. 1971) is a Puerto Rican-born artist, educator, and co-director of 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. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, and now immersed in her Chicago community, the artist has evolved to raise questions through her work about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism.
Soto has presented recent solo exhibitions at Comfort Station, Chicago, IL (2024); Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2023); Abrons Art Center, New York, NY (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2018); Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2017); The Arts Club of Chicago, IL (2017). Her work has been featured in notable recent group exhibitions including Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2024); Entre Horizontes, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2023); no existe un mundo poshuracán, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2022); and Estamos Bien, La Trienal 20/21, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2021).
She has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award; and US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship; and MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund. Soto has received numerous public commissions, for Noor Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024); Now & There, Central Wharf Park, Boston, MA (2023); the Chicago Architecture Biennial, IL (2023); and Millenium Park in Chicago, IL (2019). Her work is in the collection of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico; and Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago.