Art
Using art, education and community design as tools to wage love and healing
Nuestros Bonitos Recuerdos: An installation dedicated to remembering 2024. Photos were submitted by CLUES employees remembering 2024. Candida used them to create collages and transfer them to fabric. They hang along with repurposed chain and other objects. CLUES employees also wrote their favorite memories of the year and hung them on the installation. Visitors are invited to sit and write their own memories and add them to the basket. Commissioned by CLUES, 2024
Bendiciones 2025: An altar dedicated to giving and receiving blessings for 2025. Visitors are invited to write blessings on pre-printed cards to add their blessings for 2025. The candles are designed to mimic traditional altar candles and are dedicated to amor, dinero, salud, paz y justicia. The desk is collaged using Candida's photography of water. Commissioned by CLUES, 2024.
I Wear Gold to Talk to My Ancestors: For Boricuas, Caribeños, and large parts of Latin America, we adorn ourselves with gold starting at birth. Gold was the resource that the Spanish colonizers lusted after and murdered us for. When we wear our gold now, we are claiming it as our birthright and reclaiming what was stolen from us. Everytime we put on our gold hoops, everytime we arrange our jewelry boxes, we are declaring ourselves sacred and calling in our ancestors. We wear gold to remind us that gold runs in our veins. Photo by Rik Sferra. Click through for more images, info and press.
Caldero Familiar: Caldero Familiar is a kitchen installation filled with items that you might find in any Puerto Rican house in the diaspora. It is a reminder of how food is one of the principal ways that we connect with our homelands and that we teach our children about their ancestral ways. We create altars in the kitchen without realizing it, the ingredients, the calderos, the pilones honored as sacred tools that hold the connection between us and our ancestors. The collages in the installation feature family members of Candida, ancestors and living, and speak to the way our foods keep us connected. Photo by Rik Sferra. Click through for more images, info and press.
Brujería Musicál/ Everyday Spells: A spell is simply a combination of a set of specifically chosen elements. Brujería Musicál/Everyday Spells calls attention to the spells that exist in the songs that we listen to and sing along to every day. Each set of words on the wall are easily recognizable to most Boricuas and when read fill the body with the particular emotion that the song spell creates for the listener. The words on the floor represent the elements that the musician manipulates when creating their spell. Participants are asked to contribute their own favorite song spells and the feeling that it invokes in them. Photo by Rik Sferra. Click through for more images, info and press.
Underwater, 2024. Digital Collage, part of the installation ReCreation. ReCreation is an immersive experience in which Candida creates a patio setup designed to mimic an outdoor space in Puerto Rico. It is inspired by the way that immigrant families bring pieces of their home countries into their new households and attempt to re-create tropical experiences even in dramatically different climates. Participants are invited to sit within the illustration and view video created by Candida and audio accessible through QR code. Click through for more images, info and press.
Seen, 2023. Temporary installation, Public Functionary, Minneapolis, MN. This altar is dedicated to the desire to be seen as one's fullest, truest self and the difficulties of finding acceptance in the wider world as queer + trans caribeñe individuals. The tarot deck created by Cándida (Seen Tarot) shows the full major arcana featuring queer + trans caribeñe performers who are transforming acceptance and inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the wider Latinx community. Community is asked to sit at the altar, look in the mirror and reflect in the journal about how they would like to be seen by the world. The design was a collaboration with Bayou Bay, the creator of Affirmation Space. Bayou conceived of and created the large sun weave that holds, anchors and centers the altar. Photo credit: Uche Iroegbu Photographic
Transgressive, 2023. This work is a multi-media installation interrogating Latina beauty standards and how they affect queer/trans/marimacha Latinx youth. Part of the show Inventadas, curated by Alondra Garza at Franconia Sculpture Park.
Exhale: A moment for QTBIPOC grief and joy, 2022. Two interactive altars dedicated to all that we have lost as a QTBIPOC community in 2020-2022 and what we want to see in our radical queer future. Click on picture to see more about this installation.
Respira/Breathe, Minneapolis, MN. Creation of 6 public temporary installations in South Minneapolis designed to promote healing and community connection. In process- completion Sept. 2022.
Ni Santa, Ni Puta- The Duality of Cancer and Capricorn, Creating Change Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, 2021. Picture shows my offering to a collaborative gallery altar installation with Keila Anheli Saucedo. The installation uses the symbolism in found objects to represent the Capricorn/Puta/Devil energy. Many of my objects were sourced in Puerto Rico at the end of 2021.
Radical Playground, 2019, Minneapolis, MN. Project created as Creative City Challenge winner awarded by the City of Minneapolis and Northern Lights MN. In collaboration with Mary Anne Quiroz and Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center. Temporary sculptural installation debuting in downtown Minneapolis from June to August 2019. The installation consisted of whimsical interactive alebrije animal sculptures inspired by dream creatures from the Caribbean, Mexico, the Pacific Islands and the indigenous cultures of Minnesota accompanied by a summer of programming, inviting communities of color to heal and participate in radical joy through movement, music, ceremony and play.
Respira/Breathe Prototype, Minneapolis, 2021.
Las Ranas Jewelry, 2018-Present. A jewelry creation project designed to allow me to explore astrology and espiritismo. Mixed media assemblage using found objects, acrylic, brass and crystals.
Las Ranas Jewelry, 2021
Respira/Breathe Prototype, Minneapolis, 2021. Temporary installation created as a prototype for a larger project that has been funded for spring/summer 2022. Circle created with crystals and shells semi-hidden in a public park in South Minneapolis. Participants were asked to sit in the circle and take a moment from their busy days to reflect and breathe. After they were done they were asked to take a piece of the circle and replace it with something from the park as well as reflect in a journal that stayed in the circle. The installation was complete when the circle had disappeared.
Central Identity Project, Central Neighborhood/ Green Central Community School, Mpls, MN, 2013. A 2000 sq. ft. mural fabricated in 10 community paint sessions throughout Central Neighborhood exploring the Central Identity. Acrylic on polytab. I oversaw project ideation, management and community engagement.
I Am Water, I Am a Water Protector, Northern Spark Festival 2017, install on East 7th Street in St. Paul, MN. In collaboration with the Indigenous Roots Cultural Center and MN350 celebrating youth water protectors at Standing Rock. I oversaw project ideation, design and community engagement.
Creative CityMaking, City of Minneapolis, Minneapolis, MN, 2017. We worked for a year with the Resilience in Communities After Stress and Trauma (ReCAST) program collaborators to capture and share unheard narratives on the historical nature of trauma in the East African and Latinx communities. Stories were used to create a collaboratively painted mural installed in City Hall.