UNRULY SUBJECTS
ABOUT THE INSTALLATION
SOFÍA GALLISÁ MURIENTE
BORN 1986, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO; ACTIVE SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
NATALIA LASSALLE-MORILLO
BORN 1991, BAYAMÓN, PUERTO RICO; ACTIVE SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
CARLOS J. SOTO
BORN 1980, NEW YORK, NEW YORK; ACTIVE BRONX, NEW YORK
Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Sofía Gallisá Muriente’s Unruly Subjects examines the Smithsonian Institution as a home for Puerto Rican cultural heritage. In 2022, the artists participated in the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, which gave them access to the Teodoro Vidal Collection of Puerto Rican History at the National Museum of American History, and to Taíno objects from Puerto Rico collected by Jesse Walter Fewkes at the National Museum of Natural History. Fewkes was a Smithsonian anthropologist sent to Puerto Rico as the Spanish-American War (1898) ended to collect Indigenous objects from the United States’s new “territory.” Vidal was a Puerto Rican government official and self-taught historian whose gift of more than 3,000 objects from the Island constituted one of the largest donations in Smithsonian history.
Time spent with these collections fueled the artists’ interest in the materials and design strategies used to protect and house Smithsonian objects, in contrast with the original homes from which these objects were taken, illustrating the difference between institutional space and the living histories preserved in Puerto Rico by countless individuals.
In response, Gallisá Muriente and Lassalle-Morillo commissioned contemporary Puerto Rican artists working with clay, cotton, and natural pigments—materials used by inhabitants of the archipelago for centuries—to create works inspired by the collection. Conceived with theater designer Carlos J. Soto, Unruly Subjects brings to life the many actors involved in amassing and preserving the material culture of Puerto Rico. Juxtaposing reimagined spaces of collections care with a series of videos and reimagined objects, Lassalle-Morillo and Gallisá Muriente endeavor to connect the Smithsonian collection objects and their origins in Puerto Rico, while also examining the collecting histories of Fewkes and Vidal.
Artist collaborators include Amara Abdal Figueroa, Karla Claudio, Carola Cintrón Moscoso, Beatriz Lizardi, Leila Mattina, and Rosaura Rodríguez.
Videos filmed and edited by Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Natalia Lassalle-Morillo. Assistant Editor Laura Sofía Pérez. Sound Design Juan Antonio Arroyo. Sound Recordist Victor Torres González. Additional camera work by Xhosa Fray-Chinn. Color correction Oswaldo Colón Ortíz.
Special thanks to Paulina Ascencio, Joshua Bell, Casa Fantasmes, Antonio Curet, Rosa Ficek, Mario Gracia, Dani Gracia, Nayarit Gracia Rodríguez, Reibo Gracia Vanasse, Amanda Guzman, Jake Homiak, Nancy Kenet Vickery, Gina Malley Campos, Carlos Martínez Palmer, Emily Orr, Jomary Ortega, Abdiel Ortíz Carrasquillo, Katherine Ott, Marta Pérez García, Roberto Pérez Reyes, Julio Quiros, Ramón Rivera Servera, Reniel Rodríguez, Nina Lucía Rodríguez, Gisela Rosario Ramos, Soraya Serra, Fernando Schnitzer Krasinsky, Elena Vanasse Torres, Stephen Velázquez, Carlos Vélez Mercado, Cynthia Vidaurri, Ranald Woodaman, and Ricardo Zeno.
ACCESSIBILITY RESOURCES
Please note: visual descriptions for the exhibition will be available soon. Thank you for your patience.
