“With an unusual lyricism for insular iconography, “Portrait in the Sunny Garden” sketches diverse imaginaries commonly dissociated from Blackness. To the decolonial narratives that position marooning as the epitome of Black expression in the Caribbean and Latin America, the artist adds these delicate nuances where beauty, serenity, and purification replace the typical atmosphere of survival, escape, blood, and pain that frames, albeit with a certain Manichaeism, the lives of Black communities that have endured various historical upheavals. While the wilderness continues to serve as a refuge, it is no longer restricted to an untamed, rugged, ritualistic, and wild experience. The wilderness, that sacred altar so masterfully evoked in Lydia Cabrera’s writings, certainly exists, educates, and moderates the visual discourse of these works. The artist redeems it with devotion, explicitly references it in one of her central paintings, and embraces the wisdom of its doctrine. However, her perspective drifts toward other, less explored zones: romance, gallant scenes, contemplative fruition, and a human sentimentality that can only be compared to the spontaneous sublimation of Black life in Alejo Carpentier’s early and memorable novel Ecué-Yamba-O. As in that novel, the narrative argument of this essay could be structured around at least three essential concepts: life, beauty, and the very subjectivity emanating from the Black race.”

Jorge Peré