Lina Puerta

BROCCOLI CROP WORKERS (2017) FROM FROM THE LATINO FARMWORKER TAPESTRIES SERIES & TOMATO LEAF AND I (MULTICOLORED) (2020) FROM THE KINSHIP SERIES

Puerta’s work examines the relationship between nature and the human-made, engaging themes of food justice, xenophobia, hyper-consumerism, and ancestral knowledge. In her “Latinx Farmworkers in the US Tapestries Series” (2017) the artist highlights the extreme physical labor and hardship demanded by exploitative industrial agricultural systems, contrasted against the poetic life cycle of the crops themselves. Her most recent series, “Kinship”, emerged from a process of reaching out for connection to ancestral indigenous knowledge that inspires a new relationship with plants—not just as food or medicine—but to their entire bodies and accumulated wisdom.

Drawing from her experience as a Colombian-American, Lina Puerta’s art examines the relationship between nature and the human-made, and engages in themes of food justice, xenophobia, hyper-consumerism, and ancestral knowledge. She creates mixed media sculptures, installations, collages, handmade-paper paintings and wall hangings by combining a wide range of materials, from artificial plants and paper pulp to found, personal and recycled objects.

Puerta was born in NJ, raised in Colombia and lives and works in NYC. She holds an MS in Art Education from CUNY and has exhibited internationally. She has been honored with numerous awards including the 2019/2020 Artist-in-Residence at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling in Harlem, 2017-NYFA Fellowship in Crafts/Sculpture, Fall 2017 Artist-in-Residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, the 2016 Dieu Donné Workspace Residency, Artprize-8 Sustainability Award, 2015 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, 2015 Kohler Arts Industry Residency (WI), 2013-14 Smack Mellon Art Studio Program among others. Exhibition venues include the Barns Art Center, The Sugarhill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, the Ford Foundation Gallery, The Museum of Biblical Art, El Museo del Barrio, Socrates Sculpture Park, Wave Hill, and Geary Contemporary in New York City; 21C Museum Hotels in Louisville, KY and Bentonville, AR; Pi Artworks in London and Ponce+Robles in Spain. Puerta’s work has been written about in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and Artnet News among others.

Currently, a survey show, expanding 18 years of her career, is on view at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery in NYC, through March 5th, 2022.