Emilio Maldonado

Lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, USA

Artist statement

My work is an act of expression that resists full translation. It emerges from a space where language falters and is instead shaped by intuition, repetition, and material gesture. Rooted in my Afro-Caribbean heritage and personal history, my practice explores themes of memory, labor, ritual, and the absurd through sculpture, installation, and performance. I work with salvaged and culturally resonant materials: tile, wire, wood, discarded furniture; objects marked by prior use and loaded with association. These materials recall my childhood environments: construction sites, family homes, places of improvisation and survival. They form the vocabulary through which I question visibility, power, and belonging. My process begins in observation and unfolds through accumulation of materials, gestures, and unresolved questions. I am not seeking resolution or clarity. Instead, I make work that invites encounter: fragmented, emotionally charged spaces where the viewer can recognize, misread, or even get lost. This is how I remain in conversation with where I come from, not by defining it, but by holding space for its complexity.

Artwork