CORE CONSTRASTS IN PAINT

TALLER BORICUA

New York, New York

April 10th-May30th

This exhibition explores the complexity of Puerto Rican identity through a richly layered blend of personal symbolism, cultural history, and ecological reflection. Drawing from folklore, colonial legacies, and the experience of diaspora, the pieces invite viewers into a world where ancestry, nature, and memory coexist. Themes of extinction and revival, aggression and tenderness, and the entanglement of myth and reality are woven throughout, offering a meditation on survival and transformation—both human and nonhuman.

Surreal imagery, dreamlike compositions, and unexpected pairings—such as parrots alongside self-portraits or tarantulas scaling banana blossoms—create a visual language that blurs the boundaries between the natural and the fantastical. These works speak to the tension of existing in multiple places at once, of preserving tradition in an age of overconsumption, and of finding meaning in the small, symbolic details of everyday life. Grounded in lived experience and ancestral knowledge, the exhibition is both a celebration of cultural continuity and an invitation to imagine new ways of seeing and being.