El lugar de la morada (The Place of Dwelling), by Puerto Rican artist Edra Soto, is part of a profound reflection on the Puerto Rican diasporic experience.
Based in Chicago for thirty years, Soto has built a solid artistic career centered on works that, in her own words, “trace the intimate value of working-class residential architecture, highlighting its decorative motifs as symbols of memory and resilience.” Her work examines a heritage often sidelined by official discourses, dominant narratives, and the social structures that have defined the country’s cultural history.
“I work at the intersection of architectural language and social practice, fostering conversations about historical structures, diasporic identity, memory, and loss. Expanding on my fusion of architectural interventions, interpersonal interactions, and archival exploration, this new project uses the geometric abstractions of Puerto Rican residential motifs to reveal intertwined personal memories and a secular humanism,” says Soto.
Regarding the project, curator Juan Carlos López Quintero notes: “Her work invites us to look through that fractal geometry—which has its roots in Africa, as architectural historians have clearly demonstrated, and which gracefully adorns working-class homes through railings, brick walls, grilles, and sun screens—so that we may literally step into the collective imagination of a people.”
The exhibition also includes works by four artists invited by Soto—Nora Maité Nieves, Ada del Pilar Ortiz, Marisol Ruiz, and Natalia Sánchez—whose aesthetic approaches also engage with architecture. Together, they create an open, inclusive dialogue about the urban landscape and new ways of understanding this theme within contemporary Puerto Rican art.
The exhibition is part of Regresos / Homeward Bound, a series launched in 2023 that brings contemporary Puerto Rican artists from the diaspora back to the Museum.
