L’état incertain / An Uncertain State gathers and weaves the works of a group of artists whose practices meander through territorial retrieval, sensorial awareness and contemporary notions of tropical aesthetics. 


The exhibition is imagined as opening a discussion on the idea of what an uncertain state can be - both territorially, in reference to Puerto Rico’s associated relationship to the United States, and psychosomatically, as in a state of being. The title is taken from an article published in 1983 by National Geographic - The Uncertain State of Puerto Rico -  which gives a third-worldesque overview of Puerto Rico’s socio-political dynamics of the time. 


The exhibition aims to rethink the gallery space as a tropical-infused sensorial environment: a microcosm that elicits a state of reception, an anti-productive tropicality, a gateway to kinship and the opening of the senses - all seen here as expanded forms of identity, and of resistance.  

Through her scent-based work, Chaveli Sifre brings Caribbean smells into the exhibition arena, facilitating the process of dis-othering. Jorge González centers his work around Boricua (Puerto Rican) folklore and craft, creating more inclusive narratives between the indigenous and the modern, while Radamés Figueroa’s works examine Caribbean stereotypes with humour while reclaiming notions of tropical leisure from colonialism and tourism. The sound works of Joel Rodríguez offer a filtered gaze of paradise, undercoated in political reverberations, mirroring the work of duo Melissa Raymond and René Sandín on the sensorial and geopolitical properties of color through the reproduction of color schemes found  along Puerto Rico’s roads and utility poles.


Our approach will be that of an “aménagement” of the gallery, seeking to create an environment by juxtaposing our works in ways that they function as a setting. A setting that arouses the senses and welcomes the visitor to unwind, eliciting the idea of the space becoming a tropical getaway.