Edra Soto

Interview by Scott Indrisek

Multidisciplinary artist Edra Soto raises important issues through simple means. Her large-scale sculptures and interventions are modeled on ornate fencing and other architectural details native to Puerto Rico; they’re a subtle introduction to a rich and nuanced cultural history. Recently, she’s begun including “viewfinders” within these fence-like constructions, loaded with photographs from the island and elsewhere. Her projects are simultaneously universal and intensely personal—as is the case with her ongoing fascination with Iris Chacón, a performer and entertainer she first encountered on television as a child.

Soto, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is currently based in Chicago, conjures art from unexpected sources: collecting and exhibiting bottles from around her immediate neighborhood (Open 24 Hours) or lovingly upholstering common chairs with kitschy beach towels (Tropicalamerican III). Her thrillingly conceptual practice has earned her exhibitions at the MCA Chicago and a new two-year commission in the city’s Millenium Park—not to mention the inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize, for which she’ll receive a $10,000 award. I caught up with Soto to discuss her fascination with architecture, her early surrealist painting practice, and how her latest project was literally a dream come true.

Scott Indrisek (SI): With any given project, which comes first: the concept, or the physical form? Is it the idea, or what that idea will look like?

Edra Soto: The idea drives the project. I’ll start researching, maybe just talking to myself, thinking: ‘Is this worth pursuing? Is it important enough for me to invest time and energy?’ I can talk about the projects I’ve been working on for the past ten years. There’s Graft, which I started in 2012. It comes from questioning aspects of vernacular architecture, in relation to Colonial architecture, in Puerto Rico. And I’m also thinking about my condition right now, my constant traveling to Puerto Rico. I’ve been in Chicago for a couple of decades, and I grew up in Puerto Rico for twenty-seven years. That’s a motivation for me, a frame where I start thinking about that relationship. Traveling intensified as my parents got older. Being in Puerto Rico before, during, and after Hurricane Maria really brought another layer to this project, another motivation to continue researching, and questioning ways of being more inclusive to the audience.

SI: What were your biggest challenges as an artist when you first relocated from Puerto Rico to Chicago for school?

Soto: I was very young and somewhat naive. It took me a year to adjust to what I thought was radical at the time. Amongst the biggest challenges I experienced was not being great at expressing myself in English. Language is still a struggle for me. I never feel fully comfortable with my writing and speaking ability in English. Sarcasm was new to me, and I kept thinking I was being insulted…I was a Spanish speaker for twenty-seven years! Other things—like the weather, and finding the right place to live—were a part of the challenge, but because I was a student and had a community and a purpose, I focused all my attention on working and making art and trying to figure out what kind of artist I wanted to be.

GRAFT, 2019

Sintra, metal, paint

120 x 456 x 6 in.

SI: Your family is still back on the island?

Soto: My mother is; my father passed a couple of years ago now. That made my relationship with Puerto Rico intensify, because now I have to constantly travel to see my mom, who is 83. It’s something I don’t even know how to address directly, but I think it’s embedded in the work—I’m now including personal pictures. I can talk about the elderly, and that very difficult part of someone’s life: loneliness and relationships. I started thinking about taking the decorative elements of Graft and wondering: “Can I make this experience a bit more visible or intimate?” Now, with viewfinders behind the decorative patterns, anyone can engage at a deeper level.

SI: Would you say the new work is very autobiographical then? Or is it still somehow universal?

Soto: Most of my work is motivated by deeply personal concerns from which I see potential to empathize and engage with viewers at different levels. For me to consider talking about a tragedy like Hurricane Maria, for instance, I felt that I had to put myself on the line. I didn’t think I could make a portrait of somebody else’s tragedy, but if I did it through my personal filter...then perhaps I’d be able to talk about it. Inserted in the viewfinders are photos of vernacular architecture from Puerto Rico that I’ve been documenting since 2010. My focus is the documentation of the facades of middle-class homes in residential areas. I also include documentation of the house I grew up in, where my mom still lives, and where I stay when I visit her. My documentation extends to particular objects, artifacts, domestic still lifes, and arrangements in hopes to capture urban idiosyncrasy.

Going through Maria with my mother was a tremendous agony that I'll never forget. It took me over a year to figure out the best way to address this and integrate this experience to my work. In Graft, I’ve included photos that capture the reflection of the aftermath of Maria: dark areas of my mom’s house with glimpses of light coming through the windows; photos of my mother’s silhouette, in her bedroom, wandering around with her walker; and the dramatic changes of the landscape. This was very shocking to experience; the sky was spectacular and frightening, and the landscape was unrecognizable. The typical randomness of the wild land was stripped away.

“I started asking, 'Can I make this experience more visible, more personal?'"

SI: The architectural interventions that these images are now included within aren’t always obvious. They’re understated.

Soto: With Graft, sometimes the patterns can be dismissed, like they were part of the building already, and not part of an exhibition. I always question traditional practices, so doing architectural interventions becomes fascinating, because it does challenge the conventional models. Architectural interventions are a little more challenging, if they’re not directly pointed out: *‘This is a part of the show!’ *

SI: What brought about your interest in these architectural forms?

Soto: I’m talking about things that should be validated, that should be introduced in the educational system. Growing up, receiving information about architecture in elementary or high school, it was usually in relationship to Colonial architecture: Spain, that history. I’m thinking about the origins and authors of these decorative Puerto Rican patterns, and that is not a part of the history that is taught in school. Colonial architecture can be overbearing; particular Colonial elements become the face of Puerto Rico. If you go to the airport in San Juan, you walk through the gate and you see a big picture of this element called a garita: a wall-mounted turret that can house a body, for protection, and has a little window. Seeing this element as a signifier of “Welcome to Puerto Rico!”—it’s incredibly disappointing.

Screenhouse, 2017

Sintra, pvc, metal

144 x 120 x 96 in.

SI: You seem very invested in bringing in those who aren’t typically part of existing “art audiences,” including those who might rarely go to museums or galleries, or people who feel uncomfortable with art.

Soto: I try to think about who I was before I became an artist. I try to put myself in the viewer’s place and imagine how experiencing my work will look like for them. DominoDomino, for example…While traveling in Puerto Rico one summer with my husband—the designer and fabricator Dan Sullivan, owner of Navillus Woodworks. We were walking through a public plaza in Old San Juan. There I saw a concrete table and set of chairs, typically used for playing dominoes. I started to think about the simplicity of the design, similar to mid-century modern design. At the time, Dan was designing a beautiful, mid-century-inspired line of furniture made in wood. I kept thinking about the similarities of the public furniture design in relation to high-end furniture and decided to ask Dan to collaborate on what became DominoDomino.

It went from Expo Chicago to the Perez Art Museum, Miami and Hunter College in East Harlem, New York. At Hunter, curator Arden Sherman there told me there was a really prominent Puerto Rican population in their area, and a group that gets together to play dominos; they really wanted the table. When my husband and I went to the opening, it was already crowded—a pack of men and women trying to get on the table, the ladies saying, “it’s our turn now!” We teared up, it was so emotional, and kind of sensational to see how they sort of took it over—like it was their property.

I also think Graft has done this as well. It behaves like a people magnet. It’s a pleasant sort of experience, a pleasant pattern. It’s almost like nothing is happening. It’s a backdrop. There’s a new element I added after a couple of iterations, based on a bus shelter from Puerto Rico. People will go to it, sit down, pose, take a selfie and then leave. It’s a public seat, people can do what they want. They can also take the literary material and read it, or the PDF provided if people are curious, so they can see it through their phone as well.

"I want the experience to be somewhat beautiful. That doesn’t dictate what it’s going to be, but I do want a somewhat seductive environment, for sure."

SI: In some ways, it seems like the decorative elements are there to seduce someone walking past—“that’s a beautiful object!”—and then hopefully that gets them to come closer, where you can tell a story that’s deeper than the ornamentation.

Soto: I clearly care about aesthetics. I want the experience to be somewhat beautiful. That doesn’t dictate what it’s going to be, but I do want a somewhat seductive environment, for sure. I want people to feel like they want to walk up to the work.

DominoDomino (in collaboration with Dan Sullivan), 2014

Jatoba, MDF, inlaid Corian

30 x 30 x 30 in.

SI: Do you have any formal background in architecture?

Soto: No, but I naturally tend to like design. And I’m a little bit obsessed with proportions and compositions, things that really have to do with architecture.

SI: Yet you actually got your start as a painter.

Soto: I did start as a painter, in Puerto Rico, during the last years of my degree. I was taken on by a gallery that was very popular at the time, and they sold my work; I was really young, and didn’t understand what I’d gotten into. I was eager to express myself through some artistic form. I was incredibly shy when I was young. I could hardly talk for myself, but I found that I could express myself through art. I still find it hard to express myself sometimes; I can’t believe I do performance, and all kinds of things that make me feel that I have a voice.

SI: Tell me about the paintings you made.

Soto: They were kind of surreal. Magical realism. Sort of happy and celebratory, about life and love, with exploding volcanoes and other ridiculous images. I had a lot of fun crafting them, but at some point I felt that I’d hit a wall. The format became limiting. The way that I found to connect and immerse others was through architectural interventions and installations. I didn’t feel like I could that through painting. But who knows? I’m still here. Painting might happen in the future, as a way of solving my own problems—if I want to say something, and think that painting would be the best way to do that. I don’t think I have to follow any rules, you know.

"Church might be why I'm so attracted to building a stage, creating a space for people."

SI: What do you think connects those early paintings with the work you made after, and the work you make now?

Soto: One thing that might tie all of those things together? Religion. I grew up in a Catholic elementary and high school. I had to go to church every morning, and I started thinking about church in terms of how much it relates to an installation. Its properties: the theatrics, the space to gather, the artifacts, the props. It makes sense, why I’m so attracted to building a stage, or creating a space for people. I think Graft, and these architectural interventions, are a way to immerse people in a space. People have the option to get involved, or not. It’s a voluntary experience.

SI: Do you think of what you do in terms of “social practice”?

Soto: I’ve done projects that maybe others have categorized as social practice. My personal interest in bringing people into the work is a great consideration, but I never thought of it in those terms, or wanted to make a career out of being a social-practice artist. I actually question activism within the art world in terms of what it doesn’t supply—the aesthetic component isn’t fully considered, sometimes. There aren’t enough strong, visual components.

SI: Yet a project like Open 24 Hours, for which you collect and display empty bottles from around Chicago—that does seem like it has a relationship to the larger community.

Soto: I started collecting those bottles and realizing how they connected to the history of this historically black neighborhood. My motivation was definitely civic, but I don’t think too much about the categories. It’s more about: This is what I need to do at this moment, this is meaningful to me. I’ll continue a project if there are relevant connections to culture, to our current issues, if I feel like it has a real connection to current conversations.

Open 24 Hours, 2018

Cleaned glass liquor bottles, display cases, casting table

SI: Let’s backtrack to an earlier project that’s still relevant to what you’re doing now: The Chacon-Soto Show, which you staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2009. What was the inspiration there?

Soto: I had been feeling like I wanted to do something more inclusive and immersive, and that was the first attempt. The exhibition was motivated by Iris Chacón, a dancer from Puerto Rico, and it was a still-life set based on the stage she danced on. At the back of the stage I had these benches. There was no music, no real lighting manipulation. I was thinking: ‘People will go, and sit, and that will be the activation. You don’t need a performance, just the space.’ It needed people to be complete.

SI: That installation also included a series of very unique, related portraits. Tell me about those.

Soto: I asked over 50 artists and students to draw my portrait, with the characteristics of a gorilla. When Chacón did her performances, she surrounded herself with dancers dressed in costumes, including gorilla costumes. I found a picture of this in a newspaper that I bought on eBay. I wanted to create something that sort of embodied Chacón’s power, but I didn’t want to look or be like her. My surreal approach was to get close to her energy by transforming myself into a gorilla.

SI: And you had memories of seeing Chacón on television as a child?

Soto: I think I was 7 or 8 when I first saw her show. She was a dancer, but she’d conduct interviews, do comedy skits. She was a soap-opera actress as well, and a recording artist. My mom had this record at home that I carry with me—the cover was actually the invitation for my show at MCA Chicago. She’s on all fours, like an animal, in a bikini. But the really amazing thing about her recording career is that most of the songs she sings are about the working class, political songs. I recently rendered a proposal for an installation by recreating another stage she once performed on. Chacón was a little activist in disguise. She’d talk about her family in terms of them all being intellectuals, doctors and lawyers, and she’d say that she was a very shy person. Growing up as a very shy person I could identify with her. She created this incredibly sexy character, to liberate herself. She was talking about women’s sexuality and liberation during the ‘70s and ‘80s. So she became my subject, and I’m not done with her, obviously.

SI: Is Chacón a kind of alter ego for you, then?

Soto: I wanted to be one of her followers. I don’t need to be her; she is her. But I’m obsessed with her career and what that meant, all the things that it conveyed.

"Growing up, as a very shy person, I could identify with Iris Chacón. She created this incredibly sexy character, to liberate herself."

SI: Tell me about The Franklin, the unconventional exhibition space you and your husband run out of your home in Chicago.

Soto: We’ve been running it since 2012. We do it because we love art, and we care about giving others visibility, and building community through the projects and events. The exhibition space is in the backyard—it’s kind of a modern gazebo, 10 x 10 feet, with a roof and movable walls. We’ve had all kinds of shows there: immersive installations, video. We come with a warning: ‘Not everything really works great here. But you should really visit, and see what you’d be comfortable showing.’ The openings are pretty festive, and then it’s open by appointment.

We also have an art collection, and I’ve started archiving it with curator Cecilia Vargas. We got a grant from the 3Arts Foundation to make a takeaway and a publication. A lot of students will come to our house to visit the collection. It might not make a lot of sense, visually, but it’s all about the artistic community. The pieces are connected in terms of trading work—things that have been given to us, or that I’ve traded with other artists, or that were bought at auctions for non-profits or artist-run spaces. That’s what unifies it.

SI: Is there a project that you’d love to realize, if money were no object?

Soto: I actually completed a project at Millennium Park in Chicago recently, titled Screenhouse. It’s a different iteration of Graft. It sounds cheesy, but it was a dream come true for me. It’s going to be in the park for two and a half years, activated with performances organized by me and the city of Chicago. It was a very big project, this modern-looking structure, designed from scratch, made with concrete. All the molds were custom-fabricated. We had a structural engineer, a team of concrete experts—because it wasn’t a conventional way of building, since there’s no mortar between the blocks. It was intense. But it’s there now, and we love it!

"I'd tell young artists not to forget what brought them to the decision to study art in the first place."

SI: Based on your experience so far, what advice might you offer to other young artists?

SI: Being an artist is a challenge in itself. I wish I could pretend it is not, but it is a career that depends too much on the validation of others. Perhaps I have obtained respect, trust, and validation from some sectors of the art world—but not being a part of the commercial art world takes me off some checklists. This is not the plan I drew for myself, but just the way things have been. I’m not good at asking for things. All I can do is what I do, the best way I can. As long as I feel I am being honest, I’ll continue. To young artists who are still studying and figuring out what they want to do, I’d tell them not to forget what brought them to the decision to study art in the first place. As a professional artist, I’m satisfied with my decision not to compromise my vision and artistic mission.

Scott Indrisek

Scott Indrisek is an editor and writer who contributes to GQ, Artforum, ArtReview, Garage, and many other publications.