An Interesting Conversation with Gisela Colón
Photo Credit : Inna Svyatsky
Gisela Colón (American b. 1966, Vancouver, Canada, raised 1967, San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican-American artist whose dynamic sculptures offer mutable, perceptual experiences through the refraction, reflection, and emission of light. Generated with advanced production methods such as carbon fiber casting meant for aerospace applications, Colón’s curvilinear forms emanate a seductive, iridescent glow, fluctuating in color based on environmental conditions and where the viewer stands in relation to the work. Colón coined the term “Organic Minimalism” to describe the dual condition of her work: reductive yet active and seemingly alive. While situated within the lineage of Minimalism, Colón’s practice refuses the stasis and rigidity of structure typical of work by her male predecessors, embracing the transformative and transcendent. Informed by the natural world and rich biodiversity of her home island of Puerto Rico, her work invokes the “feminine divine” as a method of creating space for underrepresented People.
Colón has exhibited internationally throughout the United States, Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, and Latin America. Notable public exhibitions include The Future is Now for the Land Art Biennial, Desert X, Godheads - Idols in Times of Crises in the Oude Warande Forest (Netherlands 2022), and One Thousand Galaxies of Light (Starfield), an immersive light installation at the Wadi Hanifa River, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (November 2022). Colón's work was recently featured in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA's) historical survey exhibition Light, Space, Surface: Art from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (2021-2022), and. Most recently, Colón presented a solo exhibition, The Feminist Divine, at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia (2022). Her work is currently on view in an exhibition of works from the permanent collection of New York’s El Museo del Barrio, Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección. Forthcoming international projects also include Materia Prima del Caribe: Viajando Através del Tiempo con Luz, Carbón, Balas, Tierra, Agua, y Sal, a collaborative exchange project for La Bienal de la Habana, Cuba (2024).
Gisela Colón’s work resides in institutional collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Mint Museum, North Carolina; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Grand Rapids, MI; and Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO.
I had the pleasure of asking Gisela about her unique approach to using light and space in her artwork, her dream project, her upcoming solo exhibition, and so much more.
UZOMAH: How do you use minimal sculptural practice to explore the subjectivities of transformation, energy, time, and space?
GISELA: My sculptures are both totemic and cellular. They possess a visceral quality that resonates with people in a very ancient and direct manner. The viewer can feel their energetic force without words. As such, the sculptures become semiotic forms that simultaneously address the microscopic world and the macrocosmic universe. Our cells carry memories passed down from our ancestors, from generation to generation. Sometimes, we experience reactions or visceral moments rooted in something that remains inside us from thousands of years ago. Material retains memory; our bodies retain memory. The atoms composing the materials in my sculptures have existed for eons, transforming themselves over time, allowing for primal subjective experiences of transformation, energy, time, and space.
U: Your upcoming solo exhibition at the Museu Nacional da República in Brasilia is a three-part exhibition featuring a 25-foot-tall outdoor work harmonizing with the iconic Oscar Niemeyer architecture. Could you walk us through the extensive preparational work and research that went into this monumental project?
G: For over a year, I researched Brazilian history and conducted site-visits to fully immerse myself in Brazilian culture. I am captivated by the revolutionary decolonial histories of Brazil, especially the remarkable architectural contributions of Oscar Niemeyer and Lina Bo Bardi and their connection to the natural world through organicism. Brasilia, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, holds significant geographical and historical importance. Situated on the Monumental Axis, an area rich in architectural heritage, my sculptural intervention not only responded to the Museu Nacional's architecture but also to the Cathedral of Brasilia, the National Congress, the Palacio Itamaraty, the National Library, and the Ministries Esplanade. Through its form and surface, the sculptural installation brought to life Brasilia's modernist history of transformation.
De La Tierra Nací Y A La Tierra Regresaré (Architectural Intervention / Excavation), 2024 Excavation of the gallery floor reveals negative space that corresponds to the elliptical base form of the parabolic monolith hematite. This space is filled with red earth matter and hematite rocks sourced from Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which is the birthplace of the artist's father and ancestors. 24 x 12 inches; depth: dimension variable
U: Could you elaborate on your unique approach to using light and space in your artwork, which has captivated audiences worldwide?
G: Light, space, elements, minerals, physical forces, and so on are merely raw materials utilized to achieve the ultimate goal of creating a perceptual experience. The underlying theme in all my work is the transformative sensation of being alive. I aim to foster an awareness of the origins of life, the inception of time, and the profound connection between humans, the planet, and the awe-inspiring cosmic wonders beyond.
U: Efraín López Gallery is holding your first solo exhibition, which is a small survey of your work; how did you and the gallery include everything to span such an extensive career of yours so that nothing is left out and everything that needs to be said about your work is displayed?
G: Mountains Are Inside Me is a deeply personal exhibition that metaphorically tells the story of my life through materials and forms. It encompasses five bodies of work, including drawing, painting, sculpture, and an architectural intervention. The foundation of my artistic practice was established during my childhood in Puerto Rico, where I learned to paint from my mother, who was an artist and developed a fascination with science through my father, who is a chemist. Together, these works shed light on my personal history and my often complex identity as a Puerto Rican artist living in the diaspora.
The exhibition covers a time span of nearly 30 years, commencing with an early painting titled Pinnacle (El Yunque) in 1996. This piece depicts an early iteration of the monolithic structure that has become a central theme in my work. It was inspired by my observations and experiences in El Yunque, the tropical rainforest of my homeland in Puerto Rico. These monoliths symbolize the tumultuous collective history of militarized colonialism in the Caribbean, as well as draw from my own encounters with gun violence. Through a process of healing and transformation, the towering height of the monoliths reflects the majestic peaks of Puerto Rico's captivating landscape, which serve as a constant source of inspiration.
In a series of five drawings titled Llevo La Tierra Por Dentro (Serie Montañas de Puerto Rico) - (Los Picachos de Jayuya, El Yunque, La Cordillera Central, Las Piedras del Collado Cayey, El Cerro Maravilla), 2024, I explore identity using the metaphor of the orogenic mountain-building process. This process involves movements in the earth's crust that result in folding, faulting, volcanic activity, igneous intrusion, and metamorphism. The creation of majestic mountain forms serves as a symbol of strength and transformation. Each line drawing represents a mountain range in Puerto Rico that holds personal significance for me. These land formations embody my personal journey of evolving into something convergent, blended, layered, irreversible, eroded, and transformed through cataclysms, gravity, and time.
Throughout the exhibition, I incorporate red earth from my family's land in Arecibo. This connection ties the formative moments of my childhood, which were marked by violence and displacement, to my early fascination with outer space and the cosmos. This fascination was nurtured at the Arecibo Observatory, which was, until recently, the largest telescope in the world. The distinctive ochre color of Puerto Rico's red earth is derived from hematite, an iron oxide that forms over time. Hematite, one of the earliest pigments used by humans, can be found in ancient cave drawings around the world, as well as on other celestial bodies. Therefore, this exhibition, although rooted in my personal relationship with land and encounters with violence, also envisions a vast cosmic world filled with the energy of nature, ancestral memories, and a universal consciousness that transcends any individual.
Autorretrato Tectónico (Oxígeno), 2024 Body of the artist as silhouette and blow-molded acrylic 67.75 x 26 x 10 inches
U: Creating an in-situ installation involves bringing material from your native Puerto Rico to New York. How do you incorporate the cultural importance of each material you get back to blend and interchange with objects you have found in the USA?
G: I am guided by the universal process of never-ending transformation that surrounds us. Various site-specific Materias Prima, such as earth from Puerto Rico and hematite rocks from Arecibo, undergo a process of transformation and become woven into universal materials like cosmic radiation, ionic waves, stardust, gravity, energy, and time. Much like my own process of forming a complex diasporic identity, the sculptures integrate and emanate entangled conditions. My body grows from the landscape, the earth inside me grows into the sculptures, and we become one with the earth again.
A representative example of this process can be seen in the architectural intervention De La Tierra Nací Y A La Tierra Regresaré (Architectural Intervention / Excavation), 2024. In this work, I excavated the gallery floor to reveal a negative space that corresponds to the elliptical base form of the parabolic monolith hematite. This space is filled with red earth matter and hematite rocks sourced from Arecibo, Puerto Rico - the birthplace of my father and ancestors. The title of this work is a Spanish variation of the phrase "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," which originates from the Book of Common Prayer and is used in burial services. This phrase is poetically used to acknowledge the fleeting nature of human life. Through the use of dirt, I explore themes of origin, mortality, place, and time, reminding us of our impermanence and the natural cycle of life and death. We begin as simple elemental particles and eventually break down into the same basic materials, similar to the reddish blood-colored soil and hematite rocks strewn across this symbolic landscape of violence, redemption, and requiem.
Pinnacle (El Yunque), 1996 Oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches
U: How have your life experiences, such as your cultural background, influenced your aesthetic style?
G: Particular regions and cultures are not bound to physical locations. I carry my Puerto Rican homeland, experiences, language, knowledge, and community with me wherever I go. Mountains are Inside Me. The title of the exhibition reflects the concept of carrying Patria with you. Place can exist in your memory, in your cells, in ancestral knowledge passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. Place can also be a feeling or an awareness of a greater force. Place permeates your being. You integrate all experiences into a multidimensional identity. I enjoy transcending earthly boundaries and viewing life from the vast expanse of space and time, reminding myself that subjective human experiences eventually become universal and infinite.
Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), 2024 Aurora particles, stardust, cosmic radiation, intergalactic matter, ionic waves, organic carbamate, gravity, energy, and time 98.5 x 24 x 12 inches
U: How did you discover your artistic style?
G: My entire life has been a constant journey of self-taught learning, driven by a combination of natural curiosity and interests that have developed throughout my experiences. My initial venture into art began during my childhood in Puerto Rico. With a mother who was both an art historian and a painter, I was taught how to paint from a very young age. Starting at the age of four, I would paint landscapes, still lives, and various scenes using oil on canvas and wood. I immersed myself in books about artists such as Monet, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, and Wifredo Lam. One of my earliest "artworks" was a collection of clay sculptures modeled after mushrooms and worm-like shapes. When I was ten years old, I even painted an entire room in an abandoned building near my grandmother's house. Overall, I would say that my artistic style took root early in life and has continued to grow and evolve in a diverse manner ever since.
Llevo La Tierra Por Dentro (Serie Montañas de Puerto Rico) - (Los Picachos de Jayuya, El Yunque, La Cordillera Central, Las Piedras del Collado Cayey, El Cerro Maravilla), 2024 Five line drawings on archival arches 140 lb. rough paper with harvested earth, pulverized particles, and hand-processed pigmented matter 7 x 10 inches each; 7.75 x 10.75 x 1 inches (framed); approximate installed dimensions 10.75 x 75 inches
U: In one sentence, can you describe what your art represents?
G: LIFE
U: What project would you consider a dream project that you would love to see?
G: I dream of creating an intervention at the Observatorio de Arecibo in Puerto Rico, a site with a rich scientific history as well as signs of colonial decay. Being the largest telescope in the world until 2016, the remarkable story of this historic site's rapid rise and subsequent decline makes it an ideal subject for artistic discussion.
For more information about Gisela’s artwork, please visit her website. She can also be found on Instagram. Also, two exhibition showcases of Gisela’s recent artwork can be found here and also here.
