Over the past decades, the ever-unfolding work of Edra Soto has engaged many communities through its architectural discourse, intervention, and invitation. Transplanting and sharing Puerto-Rican culture is a byproduct of Soto’s deep investigative, meditative, and engaged reflection on how cultural sensitivities can highlight context and amplify voices. The formal and structural properties of her work are masterfully minimal and have already stood the test of time. Yet what’s even more magical is the space that opens up to a waterfall of cascading connections that Soto’s practice evokes.

Nadine Nakanishi: I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Graft in many iterations in Chicago: at Sector 2337, at Comfort Station, and at the Poetry Foundation. I know it’s also traveled around the States. Graft has evolved over the past decade, growing alongside your life. As you’ve traveled through time with this work, what have these structures and shapes taught you? How do you know when a project is still alive and when it’s complete?

Edra Soto: Wow, you know it from the inception, from the beginning! It has evolved for me, and now I actually don’t feel I’m in the same place. Still, the core is the Graft, which I can now describe more accurately as how I represent and celebrate working-class communities from Puerto Rico, as well as the structures and shapes that are representative of these communities.

Graft has taught me that man-made artifacts — no matter how ordinary or significant they seem — are layered with so much meaning and history, and that it is up to us to discover the world that surrounds us. Everything has some type of racial, political, and historical significance, and we should be more considerate of what we don’t understand. I believe it could make us better humans.

I’m a slow learner. I develop my projects slowly. I don’t have another option. I want to understand it not only through my perspective, but also how it impacts others. I have accepted this and embraced it. It energizes me and gives me a sense of empowerment because it’s like a form of radical acceptance. I know my shortcomings, and I accept them. They are just part of me. I also see myself as a modest contributor to the world, like a little ant.

Nadine: Oh, they’re very powerful.

Edra: They’re powerful, but they’re super tiny. I see myself as such, I always have, and that kind of keeps me in a place. It doesn’t allow me to assume that others are aware of me or my intentions, actions, or statements. Perhaps this is my sense of self-sustenance.

Nadine: The different works of Graft are so powerful to observe from where I’m sitting because the series gives and sheds light on vernacular that is developed by laypeople in construction and architecture, and lives in the domestic space. And as such, these invisible choices of the everyday environment get questioned and also recontextualized. Especially, I learn from Grafts, the diasporic context of slavery, and how that context went into rejas’ construction. Formally, I also observe in some of the sculptures and structures that their permeable spatial properties really blend the private and public space. I've had the fortune to experience the Franklin here in Chicago, which does that very generously and consequentially. From the Franklin to your large-scale pavilions, what draws you to that threshold to engage or investigate this kind of transcendent barrier?

Edra: It is interesting because it’s a very tall task to try to even address these larger-than-life issues that are deeply oppressing many communities. I’m deeply appalled by inequity. That is the main reason why I do my work. I need to be a part of that group of artists who are advocating for others, and I’m a part of that group in society that is being targeted. When racial profiling and humiliations that threaten our freedom are being normalized by the government, we need to push back — to create with purpose and bring people together, to ignite a sense of self-value and hopefulness. What I find compelling about residential architecture is that, in our culture, these decorative elements often remain in the background. They are partly invisible because they are fully integrated into our lives as simply decorations that fill space. Elevating them as significant architectural features, through size or placement, is similar to a way of reclaiming their value. Their value is rooted in class and race. 

Nadine: I definitely feel that generosity of the space you provide for people to come together, encounter the work in itself, or to sit in. You also draw the viewer in, for example, by integrating your photos into some of your structures. In your beautiful talk you had earlier last year at the School of the Art Institute as a visiting artist, you said, “My archive is my memory. It was private until it became public.” [ 1 ] How do you decide when a personal memory is ready to be shared?

Edra: I’m constantly drawn to integrate my archive into my work. If I don’t share my truth, I begin to believe that it doesn’t exist. So this is a way of thinking that has really guided my personal life and my artistic expression. As you know, I share this constantly. I don’t think there's a great division between what my life is and what my work is.

There are two things that I’ve thought about. One is that nobody really knows the people who are in my photos but me. And I think in my imagination that preserves their privacy. And there’s another part, I think there’s a little boundary between the photos that I display and the viewer who gets to look at and discover them. They discover them, and they get to see them. They don’t always discover them. Sometimes they’re integrated into the structure, but they can’t be seen.

The representations of the fences delineate the distance between the image and the physical approximation that will flourish in that encounter. I imagine that through the lens, the image that is in the lens is infused with a certain lack of definition. They look a bit vintage, which I greatly enjoy because it was an experimentation, it was an accident; I had just arrived at the conclusion that digital images are made of pointillism, so the characteristics of them are translated into this very small, tiny format. The quality of the work feels well-balanced and complemented. 

Nadine: I love how you integrated the photos into many of Grafts structures, especially in the exhibit Casas-Islas Houses-Islands. I really feel that strong push and pull between macro and micro. It dissolves the structure as you go closer, and when you go back, it slightly comes into the foreground. And that again has this kind of spatial quality of encounter that I feel the Franklin also does. Jumping to architecture, how has architectural scale changed your way of thinking about authorship and form at large? And how do you not lose sight of the delicate dynamic between factors like preservation, transformation, or even refusal when working with forms that shaped charged histories?

Edra: Working on a large scale reveals everything. You have nowhere to hide. I meditate quite profoundly before moving forward with any project, and working on a large scale has taught me so much about my public art practice. As I said in my talk, it is a true honor to receive the validation, and then that translates into communities working with you to fulfill this vision.

I’m in this strange storm of problem-solving, conversations, and meditations.  This work comes to life with so many people involved: dozens of workers, hundreds of experts in their fields — from my conceptual idea to the architectural interpretations that filter through.

At the end, I think about the inevitable trials and the compromises that tested its ability to emerge on the surface of a genuine expression. It is important for me to work with language. Some people describe it as vernacular. It means so much more to me than just vernacular because I lived in and was surrounded by this architecture. There’s that connection and how I understand it in relation to how this is seen in society, how the structures live in society as a backdrop, but I don’t see them as a backdrop. They’re ideal to work with because there are a lot of assumptions about them.

In the transformation that they go through, how to preserve the genuine expression is something that I guard when I make public work and work with others. I have to be fully convinced, and I’m not shy about putting a stop to things.

I also guard the language and the titles of the work – they mean a lot to me. They have roots, and that allows the work to transition. I always think about transition as I align it with aging and with getting older. With the transitions it has brought some knowledge and learning, which I have applied to my work. So that's what I guard and what I think also people are receptive to.

Nadine: It’s no secret that you have been very busy in recent years. Your work has reached so many new people and communities. In the exhibit Lazos Terrenales, The Place of Dwelling, and the work that you made during your Arts/Industry Residency at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, it made me really revisit your body of work in a way where I started to see all the symbolism imbued in the structures. To take architectural elements and form them into sculptures, then find a way to integrate them back on the wall, where it really reads as painting, and thinking through your earlier work, The Greatest Companions, which I find really connects to the upcoming exhibit at the MCA, Dancing the Revolution, it’s like a circle coming together.

Edra: It’s so layered. But yeah, Lazos Terrenales was the beginning of a transition for The Place of Dwelling. I feel now with The Place of Dwelling, is about reclaiming childhood memories that were the imposition of a dogma through religion. And how I started questioning that, and my realization of that, was the first experience of colonization. I didn't really have any concept of it as a child. It’s like, “Oh, yeah. This is a part of the Spanish heritage.“

Nadine: The Place of Dwelling really stuck with me as a kind of circling back. You mentioned that in your school, there was a chapel, and there were these religious artifacts.

Edra: Well, that is a different body of work, but in Dancing the Revolution, in the story of Reggaeton, and my participation in it through these artifacts I crafted years ago that I reassessed last year, it felt maybe too on the nose, which is something that you always think, “Ugh. Should I really do this?” But I’m so glad I did because it’s very honest. It’s very sincere to me.

I love Bad Bunny. I love Reggaeton. I think about how his impact, which is what I try to do with my work as well, is to impact people and help with this appreciation of the things that we have. An old house will not have value; it’s old, you don’t care about it. But if you think about it in terms of its cultural value, maybe there’s something that is operating there that is trying to do something. And what Bad Bunny does with his work, I think, is that injection of self-value and the celebration of our culture. It feels a bit over the top to me, if I were criticizing it, but I also find it somewhat endearing. It comes from the perspective of a thirty-year-old person and how genuine the language is. I think I’m more seduced by the language because of how I value the Puerto Rican language. The expression is, to me, a true symbol of authenticity. That is the street language that is in his work. It’s something very current, and it’s something that never changed, that nothing, nobody, not a colonial mindset, not the influence of the US, nothing has changed that in Puerto Rico. 

I remember as a child, on the news, there was information about how Puerto Ricans were going to speak English, and everybody laughed. It's like, “What? How could you possibly make people change the way they talk? That is just impossible.”

And I think that is a part of that language that I inherit from my mother, from my grandmother. That’s the way he talks. It amazes me that somebody who is twenty years younger than me talks like my grandma. I love that. It’s just incredible. I think that’s why everybody’s in love with it. We found this voice that is a portal of our Puerto Rican authenticity. 

Nadine: Yeah. I brought that up because in The Greatest Companion, you researched this person who was a big dance personality, Ms. Chacón. And because these “dwellings” and these sculptures are becoming more language-based to me, and then this earlier work was very concept-led, but also full of symbolic value, I was kind of curious how that’s coming together or talking together, in respect to where you are now?

Edra: Wow. You are incredible for bringing that first body of work of Iris Chacón into the conversation. Iris Chacón was a Puerto Rican vedette (a vedette is like an exotic dancer) who was on national television during family time. So the whole family could enjoy her show. When I moved to Chicago, I realized the importance of this figure in relation to what was being broadcast in Chicago, the Latino television in Chicago, and how Iris Chacón was in the '80s.

I moved to Chicago in 2000, and I saw similar shows, but the exotic dancers that are integrated with people who are all dressed up and ready to tell the news or anything, they don’t speak. They don’t have a voice. Iris Chacón was a personality who not only had her own TV show, but she was the host, she was a singer, she was an actor, she was an opera actress. She was a voice, you see? Her dancers were called the Chacón dancers.

She was somebody who was fully in charge of her sexuality. So there’s no hypocrisy there in that manifestation. And that’s very different from sexualizing people with zero voice. That was shocking to me. And I thought, “What else is there about this personality?”

I started thinking of her music career and the amazing songs that were written by French poets. There were songs of protest, too. Her repertoire focused mostly on the working-class man working in the field. And she’s singing to them like that in a sexy way. And it just blows my mind.

I revisited her shows after watching Univision here in Chicago. There were all these videos on YouTube that helped me remember, or gave a real view of what I remember from my childhood. There’s other things that are more complex in how I relate. There’s a dance tradition that she practices that other celebrities, like JLo, for example, have: they have these dance routines where people are lifting them and their body is sort of like this vessel, almost like a god or a goddess. I started examining some of that after doing the Iris Chacón show at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago). That has continued to be on my mind as something that I will re-explore and research, but it will come out in a new form because I feel like I have a better understanding of the ritual and life and death, and how this relates to the ritualistic kind of dances that are very much a part of my body of work. 

Nadine: Well, I think it’s interesting how your work extends into a very big space, easily moving through architectural vernacular, language, symbolism, and formalism. It is very interstitial in that way and ready to be discovered again and again. 

I have a question in terms of materiality. You work with many people, but you also work with a lot of material. How have the material choices that you’ve had to make, some for function considerations, some for context considerations, changed for you over time?

Edra: There’s no material without meaning. The material finds me. I’m attracted to all kinds of materials, and I think I have used all kinds of materials in my work, and I still do. But the material is not exactly dictating meaning. I think the material plays a function, sometimes a practical function, sometimes a needed function. 

Sometimes I want to create an illusion of something, and a certain material will take me to that place. For example, making a representation of a fence ten or fifteen years ago, I didn’t have a great understanding or control of that technology. I had to work with others, with my knowledge at the time, with the knowledge we all had at the time, and make a representation through this material. Now it’s very different. Things feel a bit more accurate in terms of how I visualize them. And then I use other materials to build the body of the material that I use. It’s a combination of materials that takes me to the right place, and I have to figure that out through time.

Nadine: I think you’ve done that superbly. I understand it’s a vehicle for the means of the meaning.

Edra: Yeah. In my case, I think it is. There are things that are maybe more poetic and present in some of the current components, like the ceramics. But those very much ignite this memory, or they connect to a tradition that was held by my parents in the past that I want to connect with through the same material.

That is different from making a representation of something through different materials. Sometimes people think that I use raw iron. I couldn’t use raw iron unless it’s for a public work, because it is not flexible. I can’t explore it materially the way that I can explore these forms and shapes and even the scraps; they become a part of everything, my language, because they are in my studio, and I can work with them. Ironwork is a part of a craft where the original fences come from, but it’d be price-prohibitive for me to work with them daily.

Also, I don’t recycle or repurpose the original fences because I’m talking about their value as part of a household. So if they’re taken away from the house for me to make an art piece, that doesn’t make sense to me. They make sense in the house, whereas I’m making a representation, and I try to make that very clear in my work. It’s a representation of something that exists that I consider to have great cultural value, and that’s how it manifests in my work.

Nadine: How has it been for you experiencing the Puerto Rican diaspora over the last twenty years in the context of your work? Do you feel like your work and Puerto Rican representation here is growing? 

Edra: I think that for the Latinx culture in general, it is unified or has a strong representation of Latinx communities, and that’s where we come in. I think that because I attribute the lack of representation of Puerto Rican culture, in particular, is due to its distribution being more widely diffused nationally and globally. But there are moments in contemporary culture now that have brought Puerto Ricans in, and I think that has helped expand it. But it’s just like the Latinx culture, it’s so diverse that it never becomes a one, a unit.

Nadine: It’s not monolithic.

Edra: No, it’s not. If it were, maybe there’d be more power, but there are subdivisions that enjoy that power because they have great representation. I see that in Mexican culture, for example. That’s a very powerful culture, immensely rich, culturally. It has a real strong representation everywhere in the nation. And I think Puerto Ricans have to work harder on that. Truly.

One thing that allows me to navigate nationally is that I’m an American citizen. So that could also be a factor. The comfort for Puerto Ricans is that we’re part of this; we’re not in that subdivision. That could be something that doesn't allow for thinking we need to build it stronger, but I think there's space for growing stronger united. Some organizations, like the US Latinx Forum, for example, are doing amazing work building not only an archive, but also the language and the culture through literature, by bringing writers to archive the lives and work of artists. We need more of those, or we need that to be larger and more powerful, because that is what feels like a promise that we are going to find our representation. I think representation is important. And working with others who support it. 

Nadine: I was curious about that because when you go away, sometimes you can see one's culture more clearly through the lens of time and distance. But yeah, I just want to thank you because I think you've done tremendous work creating a foundation and framework for so many younger artists and contemporary artists within the Latinx community and Puerto Rican community to be able to do work without having to assimilate to a context, but rather to create their context in their own light. Thank you for the massive vision and work you constantly share.

Edra: Thank you. Somebody that I didn't mention yet that I think I should mention is Marcela Guerrero, because when she brought the exhibition No existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria to the Whitney Museum, I think that was the foundation of the boom that put us on the map in a more palpable manner. And not only that, she had this mission of having the museum — which I think they had collected one or two Puerto Rican artists — to collect over ten artists or more from the exhibition. This is somebody who is in a powerful position, who has incredible vision and the kindest heart. I really look up to her. And I think her Whitney Biennial exhibition opening next month is going to be a reflection of that level of human that she is. So I look forward to seeing that. I thought I should mention her because she has had a great impact on my career and my life.