Natalia Lassalle-Morillo

Lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Artist statement

My artistic practice is motivated by a desire to subvert historical methodologies and narratives, and offer alternative strategies of collectively reconstructing the past and re-imagining a future. It’s been influenced by the conflicting histories and fragmented memories I inherited as a multi-generational Puerto Rican, and by my training in experimental and political theater. Through theater, I became aware of the unspoken contract between the director, actors, and audience– an agreement where the audience surrenders to the illusion presented by the director and accepts the action performed by the actors on stage as a multitude of truths, despite the technical and emotional machinery in place to sustain said illusion. I’ve become viscerally aware of the machinery in place to sustain the illusions and violence perpetuated by historical erasure. This acknowledgement that Caribbean history has been manipulated by the gaze of a colonizer and misconstrued as part of a political agenda, has made me continuously question its veracity. It’s also led me to understand history not as truth-telling, and to instead explore its relationship to theater, where every person plays a part in the making of a story. My practice is anchored in extensive and collaborative research and re-writing processes that intend to restructure historical erasures through the creation of new Caribbean mythologies, honoring the truth in the fictions we believe in order to cope with the material realities of...

Artwork