
by Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya
I conceive my work as encounters/conversations/clashes between insides and outsides — spectators’, objects’, organic bodies’, ambits´, my own. These exchanges are mediated by text — written, aural–, the reason I often refer to them as “books.” In “Ma. Juracán” the words are present on scraps of paper that have become embedded to a statue of the Virgin Mary as a result of being exposed to water during Hurricane María (Puerto Rico, 2017). The scripted icon together with an inserted conch shell, a background broken mirror (catching viewers) and protruding wires, create a material web that reflects on my experience of the phenomenon; on intermingling Taíno and Catholic pantheons; on resilience, interpenetration, and shifting consciousness around nature; on residues as anima.
