Edra Soto, a Puerto Rican-born artist based in Chicago, has spent a decade exploring the architectural motifs of her home country, highlighting their cultural value and the story they tell about Puerto Rico. Soto’s project, titled “GRAFT,” focuses on the repeating stars, circles, and other shapes found on cast-iron fences outside homes in Puerto Rico. The motifs have been exported worldwide and can be seen in everyday settings, from Starbucks to department stores. Soto’s work addresses the cultural appropriation of these patterns, emphasizing their origin in Puerto Rican culture.
Soto’s installations manifest as site-specific installations responding directly to space, and she calls them “architectural interventions.” She has presented her work in a range of exhibitions and installations, and for her upcoming exhibition, “Destination/El Destino: a decade of GRAFT,” she has created Casa Isla (2022), a 50-foot by a 14-foot sky-blue structure that appeared to rise out of the water at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Sections of that installation now form the main structure at Hyde Park Art Center.
Soto’s project evolved in 2018 when she created an installation for an LA gallery that introduced images in viewfinders that appear to hide beneath the cut-out sections of her decorative motifs. Those photographs were drawn from an archive Soto has amassed for years of the motifs appearing in the real world. The pictures trace Soto’s travel and Puerto Rican experience and allow her to build a narrative through the different images. For the latest exhibition at Hyde Park, the viewfinders will show photos of past iterations of “GRAFT,” to “instigate a certain engagement” from the viewer in a direct way.
Soto’s work tells the story of her 1998 migration from Puerto Rico to Chicago, exploring the cultural value of the architectural motifs she grew up with. Soto says that her work is a way of inhabiting space and that each iteration of “GRAFT” responds to a specific space, becoming an architectural intervention.
The upcoming exhibition at Hyde Park Art Center, which opens on April 22, honors the ten-year anniversary of Soto’s “GRAFT” project. Soto’s work is a powerful testament to the cultural value of architectural motifs in Puerto Rico and the stories they can talk about a place and its people. Soto’s project is a reminder of the importance of exploring and understanding the cultural significance of architectural elements and motifs.