Join us for the opening celebration and hear from artist Edra Soto and guest curator Pedro Alonzo as they unveil Soto’s first-ever public artwork in Boston. Experience an unforgettable celebration with the talented up-and-coming DJ Bryan Armas and performances by Danza Orgánica! Get ready to groove to vibrant Latin beats that will keep the party vibes going all evening long.
Hailing from Puerto Rico, Edra Soto has delved deep into her cultural memory to create Graft, a collection of four sculptures that serve as benches and celebrate architectural fusion. The installation beautifully incorporates Puerto Rican palm leaves into a geometric pattern, casting playful shadows and evoking a comforting sense of the island right in the heart of Boston.
About the Artist: Edra Soto is a Puerto-Rican born artist, curator, educator, and co-director of the outdoor project space, The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Soto grew up in Puerto Rico, and is now immersed in her Chicago community; her work has evolved to raise questions about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism. Soto has exhibited extensively at venues including El Museo del Barrio (NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (IL), ICA San Diego, (CA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY). She has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, the inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award and the US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship among others. Soto exhibited and traveled to Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Cuba as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund. Soto holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree from Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico. The artist lives and works in Chicago.
Central Wharf Park is adjacent to the New England Aquarium and the Rose Kennedy Greenway Rings Fountain. It is accessible by the MBTA Aquarium Stop on the Blue Line.