Foraging the Fragile and Fertile Soil with Las Nietas de Nonó
Las Nietas de Nonó, Especie: archivo natural, 2022, sounds, lamp, phone booth, phone booth hotline, fish tanks, atmospheric water, yucca, corn, dracaena, snake plant, dragon tree, tree trunks, handmade lyca garments for tree trunks, mirror pond; Dimensions variable. Photo: Filip Wolak [A large mirrored pond made of a wooden base with a reflective lining on top is surrounded by three tree trunks, plants, fish tanks, and a phone booth. A large lamp hangs from the ceiling with a metal locker in the back.]
In 2020, amidst a world gripped by pandemic turmoil and environmental uncertainty, the artist collective Las Nietas de Nonó—consisting of the Afro-diasporic artists and sisters mulowayi and mapenzi Nonó—embarked on an experiment to survive exclusively on hunting and gathering near their home in the San Antón barrio in Carolina, Puerto Rico. This experience was catalyzed by pandemic-induced stillness: "We live in an industrial area, and during lockdown our barrio fell silent. The noise of industry ceased completely. And that silence was like a revelation and invitation, an amorous rest."¹ This auditory vacuum, an inadvertent muse borne from societal standstill, served as the backdrop against which their film FOODTOPIA: después de todo territorio (Foodtopia, After Every Territory) (2021) took shape.
In FOODTOPIA, the artists collect plantains, crabs, coconuts, edible herbs, and other wild fruits during the COVID-19 lockdown, embracing these methods of sustenance as a means to explore the symbolic and material relationship between land and people. The 22-minute film takes us through abandoned junkyards filled with debris and streams bustling with vibrant plant life—the kind of whiplash scenic shifts that mulowayi refers to as “little universes that sometimes connect and disconnect.”² Landscape transitions encode a compelling interplay between the serene expanse of a natural paradise and the intricate fabric of an island economy, the “conditions of both utopia and dystopia inherent in life on an island that still holds a colonial status.”³ For the artists, “Barrio San Antón is a place with an abundance of natural resources: there are springs, fruit trees, a gully that traverses the barrio and connects to the San Juan Estuary,” which has been afflicted by the problem of local residential displacement.⁴ The duality that pervades an ostensibly idyllic island landscape is punctured by the specter of the gradual displacement of Puerto Ricans from their own land; making FOODTOPIA’s alternating settings arresting and disquieting.
The resounding declaration, "The taste of metal will not touch our waters," in the opening moments of the film echoes the ever-complex and salient themes of the climate crisis, environmental protection, and food autonomy that serve as prominent throughlines in the artists' work. The phrase might also be used to symbolize an act of preservation or protection against forces that might contaminate or compromise the essence of a tradition or way of life. It carries with this the gravity of strength and determination, implying resilience just as water cannot be tainted by the taste of metal. “The guayaba will remain sweet. The mango will remain fibrous,” the artists continue in FOODTOPIA—a powerful assertion that the abundance of the land will endure unblemished, ready for utilization, renewal, and perhaps more crucially, for savoring and rejuvenation. The social inflection of the artists' politics invites us to contemplate not only the reshaped landscape but also the community narratives irrevocably shaped by human forces.
Las Nietas de Nonó. Still from FOODTOPIA: después de todo territorio. 2021. Digital video (color, sound). Courtesy the artists.
Whether intentionally or not, such references to food systems that highlight the fertility of their land illuminate an opposing reality—a looming challenge to the very social fabric of Puerto Rican existence. Both ecological and human systems share a vulnerability to shifts and transformations. Generated in a moment of both climate and human crisis, FOODTOPIA serves as a nexus that brings to light the correlation between ecological and social resilience, that inherent ability of systems to autonomously navigate disruption and turmoil.
A sort of double appetite governs the film FOODTOPIA. Set in the Blasina stream, an area threatened by development and water extraction, FOODTOPIA is not just about the practical aspects of food access. In the words of the artists, “In the film we have to find food in order to sustain ourselves, our body, mind, spirit.”⁵ Las Nietas de Nonó's visual vocabulary seamlessly weaves elements of memory and land: soil and roots evoke heritage, while ecological networks allude to the intricate social networks that bind human societies together. The MoMA exhibition in which the video is currently shown showcases contemporary explorations into collective histories or, as the exhibition’s title puts it, “Chosen Memories.” This curatorial thread resonates deeply with the genesis of the Nonó sisters' film, which envisions Barrio San Antón as an abundant source of natural resources and a gateway to an "infinite ancestral wisdom about curatives and the power of plants."⁶ The film deals with nourishment as a metaphor not just about food autonomy and security, but also about reconnecting with ancestral wisdom: in foraging and hunting, they revitalize ancestral practices and traditional knowledge.
While sustainability and nourishment take center stage, these ostensibly gentle actions are laden with radical implications. To subsist off the land—consuming the untamed fruits borne by trees, and pursuing the invasive iguanas that the jungle harbors—is inherently at odds with the prevailing global status quo. In this sense, FOODTOPIA explores and resists the over-industrialization of food in the Caribbean. As mulowayi remarks, "Hunting for sustenance is an act of defiance," underscoring the notion that cultivating a sustainable food system empowers individuals to reclaim authority over their nourishment, breaking free from reliance on conventional industrial mechanisms.⁷ The artists’ food-seeking endeavor extends beyond its literal boundaries, metamorphosing into a metaphorical discourse on consumption: it explores the act of eating as an embodiment of participation within a system, whether in an ecological or industrialist context. As a whole, the video invites us to reshape the dynamics governing our sustenance.
From this recognition rises a driving ethos, tender and titanic, that underpins the artists’ multifaceted practice: leveraging the natural and industrial landscapes of Puerto Rico to expose the neo-colonialist exploitation and over-industrialization threatening the environmental and human sustainability of their homeland. This holds particular significance within the complex interplay of cultural, political, and natural history woven throughout the formation of identity in the Caribbean region. What I’m suggesting here is that Las Nietas de Nonó link the landscape and other natural metaphors to ancestral memory, bringing forth new offerings on how one tells the story of a landscape when it has been so dramatically altered by human intervention.
Las Nietas de Nonó: Posibles Escenarios, Vol. 1 LNN. Installation view, Artists Space, New York, 2022. [Inside a pink-hued room are three tanker desks and three rolling office chairs in a single-file line. Security monitors with color videos sit on each desk alongside small pieces of clay. In the distance, tree trunks wrapped in fabric rest on the floor and construction nets hang from the ceiling. A wooden structure and an aquarium with purple-colored lights are positioned behind the tree trunks.]
The industrial-nature hybrid of their native Barrio San Antón had materialized in physical form, in an impressively immersive design, only a few months earlier in downtown Manhattan. When Las Nietas de Nonó held their first solo show Posibles Escenarios, Vol. 1 LNN, which closed on December 3 at Artists Space, they hybridized elements of performance, video, sonic composition, and installation into several dreamlike “scenarios” of radical possibility that offer a markedly hopeful message: nature and technology are not only for consumption but are also metaphors for interconnectedness and care, an attitude that foregrounds the healing properties of art.
Curated by Danielle A. Jackson, Posibles Escenarios staged three mixed-media installations where mixtures of ambient sound, live ecology, and found objects double as stages for performance. In the biodegradable installation Sala portal omi, lightboxes overlaid with SCOPY leather—a material grown from a symbiotic culture bacteria and yeast—glow in soft yellow and orange hues alongside paneled video landscapes of rushing water. Where Sala portal omi (2022) takes an immersive and subversive approach, The page you are looking for is not found is more direct in its social commentary; clay rocks and vintage security monitors lay over three steel desks, forming an unmanned office space that critiques the bureaucratic alienation and inertia that undergird the ongoing Puerto Rican climate and housing crises. Increased rents, foreclosures, and evictions have proliferated and are exacerbated by a series of hurricanes and earthquakes that since 2016 have damaged homes, impaired the power grid, and eroded the island’s coastline.
Las Nietas de Nonó, Sala Portal Omi, 2022, dried vegetable leather, 3D animation, video landscapes, ambient sound, LED lighting, linoleum floor; Dimensions variable. Photo: Filip Wolak [A large gallery room's walls are painted black, with a black vinyl floor, and white ceiling. Along the walls are yellow and orange LED lighting sculptures that have dried vegetable leather stitched on top of the lights. In the corners of the room three TVs playing animations of rushing water are placed on top of each other.]
In Especie: archivo natural, upcycled paint buckets filled with snake and yucca plants sit beside a running fish tank, which rests on a pond made of reflective linoleum. Nearby is an old phone box, a large surgical lamp hanging from the ceiling, and bench-like tree trunks. The installation invites viewers to take a seat, put on a pair of headphones, and listen to a series of natural melodies and rhythmic songs that correspond to “nature’s vibrations in the midst of displacement caused by the legacy of colonialism and the current climate crisis.”⁸ The hybridity of Especie: archivo natural (2022) mirrors the half-industrial, half-rural makeup of Barrio San Antón. Gathering natural and found objects into a synthetic techno-garden, this piece accentuates the systematic yet playful way Las Nietas de Nonó handle synthetic and natural materials. Cables and wires, like sinuous roots, unfold across the surface of the imitative pool of water, so that natural and technological systems are conflated.
Las Nietas de Nonó, el flow oculto de agua / the hidden flow of water, 2022, cards, QR codes, desk, chair, notebook, pencils, colored markers, quote by Audre Lorde; Dimensions variable. Photo: Filip Wolak [A chair and desk face a white wall which has a grid of cards in varying colors on it. A notebook, stacks of cards, and pens are on the desk.]
But it is arguably The hidden flow of water (2022) that best exemplified the collective’s investment in creating restorative and healing spaces. Conceived as an “emotional tools station,” a classroom table and chair invites visitors to draw from three stacks of cards that list a variety of desires—freedom, joy, authenticity, trust—and write down their intrinsic needs and aspirations in a collective journal. The piece prioritizes corporeal and emotional needs, making space for nuanced expressions of self-realization anchored in reflection and communal practice.
Unlike the contained narrative of FOODTOPIA, the interactive environments presented at Artists Space aspired to generate novel, liberatory avenues for experiencing art. Such an art both politicizes and gives pleasure to those engaged in ecocritical disruption, all while embracing healing as an inherently radical endeavor—a curative twist on the conventional institutional framework and modes of critique. Mulowayi’s “belief system includes the energizing power of spaces and of people, too. When they come into the light, silenced wounds can be seen, understood, healed.”⁹ This framework of employing art to catalyze healing reminds us that the fight for climate and social equity is a crisis of connection and community.¹⁰ Las Nietas de Nonó’s decision to label each biomorphic installation at Artists Space a possible ‘scenario’ suggests each work is simultaneously a space to occupy and a state of possibility. Where they could reflect on environmental destruction, these immersive installations instead become sites of social agency, inviting us to step into a space of possibility of self-actualization.
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Endnotes
¹ Inés Katzenstein, mulowayi iyaye nonó, and mapenzi chibale nonó, “Las Nietas de Nonó: Day-to-Day Utopias: Magazine: MoMA,” The Museum of Modern Art, April 1, 2022, https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/716.
² Mapenzi writes, “Foodtopia’s scenic shifts are ones we live through day by day in the barrio. If you enter a junkyard, suddenly you’re in an alkaline water spring which is of great value to our ancestors and which is part of our ecological culture and relationship to the environment.” Ibid.
³ mulowayi iyaye nonó and mapenzi chibale nonó, “Q&A with Las Nietas de Nonó,” South London Gallery, August 30, 2022, https://www.southlondongallery.org/journal/qa-with-las-nietas-de-nono/.
⁴ Natural disaster aftereffects, lack of affordable housing, and decreasing access to jobs and services have culminated in a mass depopulation and displacement of Puerto Ricans. The interview continues, :“Since the 1990s, the people of the barrio have been fighting for the spaces that have been affected by the different industries that have been stationed in our community. This has led to a deterioration and abandonment of spaces; it seems as if we’ll never stop fighting this. In 2017 they closed the three schools in the community and this has also touched off another avalanche of displacement.” Op cit. Inés Katzenstein, mulowayi iyaye nonó and mapenzi chibale nonó, “Las Nietas de Nonó: Day-to-Day Utopias: Magazine: MoMA”
⁵ Op cit. mulowayi iyaye nonó and mapenzi chibale nonó, “Q&A with Las Nietas de Nonó,”
⁶ Op cit. Inés Katzenstein, mulowayi iyaye nonó and mapenzi chibale nonó, “Las Nietas de Nonó: Day-to-Day Utopias: Magazine: Moma”
⁷ Ibid. I feel it important to briefly reference the wider resurgence of agriculture and food sovereignty on the island. In Puerto Rico, sustainable agricultural practices aid residents in diminishing their reliance on external food imports, thereby enhancing the resilience of food systems against adverse climatic conditions and bolstering the local economy.
⁸ “Las Nietas de Nonó: Posibles Escenarios, Vol. 1 LNN,” Las Nietas de Nonó: Posibles Escenarios, Vol. 1 LNN, accessed August 14, 2023, https://artistsspace.org/exhibitions/las-nietas-de-nono.
⁹ Op cit. Inés Katzenstein, mulowayi iyaye nonó and mapenzi chibale nonó, “Las Nietas de Nonó: Day-to-Day Utopias: Magazine: MoMA”
¹⁰ I borrow this phrasing from climate activist Dominique Palmer, who stresses the generative power significance of joy, art, and connection in the climate environment. See: https://tedxlondon.com/podcasts/how-to-find-your-climate-joy/
Clara Maria Apostolatos is writer and historian of Latin American contemporary art, and the 2023-34 Kress Interpretive Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Originally from Caracas, Clara holds a BA in Art History from Columbia University and a MA in Art History and Archaeology from The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Her research focuses on urban photography, Institutional Critique, and the politics of memory. She has assisted with exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Center for Italian Modern Art, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Her other curatorial work includes "Kenneth Kemble and Silvia Torras: The Formative Years, 1956-63," organized through the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art. Her writing appears in The Brooklyn Rail, Artsy, Cultured Magazine, and Vistas: Critical Approaches to Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art.