re:assemblage collective

CELAJE

Directed by Sofía Gallisá Muriente
Puerto Rico · 2020 · 41'00

"Celaje (Cloudscape) is an elegy to the failure of the commonwealth project of Puerto Rico, the cataclysmic energy of nature, and the sense that time is ever moving, ever healing. • Processing layers of loss and grief, Gallisá Muriente thinks through ecology, geology, and other logics of time. Experimenting with the biodeterioration of film for Celaje (Cloudscape), she corroded black-and-white silver-based film stock using salt, and color film stock with humidity and mold, burying it in her grandmother’s backyard with fruits and leaves. As a reactive material, celluloid makes visible the forces of decay to mesmeric effect: forking white channels are reminiscent of a body’s veins, infinitely multiplying; flecks of black and burgundy shift a seascape into near abstraction. The relationship between climate and memory is presented as one of continual change, of impermanence that is inevitable yet poignantly beautiful." (Artspace.com)

Sofía Gallisá Muriente is a Puerto Rican visual artist whose work resists colonial forces of erasure. She has been a resident artist of Museo La Ene (Argentina), Alice Yard (Trinidad & Tobago), Solar (Canary Islands), and FAARA (Uruguay), as well as a fellow of the Flaherty Seminar and the Smithsonian Institute. From 2014 to 2020, she co-directed the artist-run, non-profit organization Beta-Local, fostering knowledge exchange and transdisciplinary practices in Puerto Rico. She is currently a fellow of the Puerto Rican Arts Initiative and the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC. [↗]