EL PUENTE

El Puente, Group Exhibition at Penland School of Craft, North Carolina, USA

Curated by Kathryn Gremley and Cristina Córdova. April-June 2025

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Participating artists:

Ada del Pilar

Jaime Suárez

Cristina Córdova

Luis Gabriel Sanabria

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Los Guerreros piece was made in collaborations with

Gaby Sánchez

Jasmine Rivera 

Alice Chéveres 

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Los Guerreros consists of three designs based on characters of carnivals in Puerto Rico. These characters are the Vejigante de Ponce, Vejigante de Loíza, and Caballero de Hatillo. These are emblems of Puerto Rican folklore and cultural icons, each of the three most famous carnivals on the Island.

In this installation, the characters are reimagined through the lens of traditional crafts of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. In this work, I explore ways in which we can relate to traditions but play with how we can approach them today to recreate a technique and mold it to create something new. It is an exploration of traditional mediums, reminiscing about the past in a new way, creating new archeological artifacts today. These carnival characters are portrayed as warriors (guerreros) because, as a cultural agent myself, I find that our culture is our biggest weapon against the powers that dominate and rule over our civilization. The costumes are the armor of these warriors. Made out of the materials of our land, a symbol of the ideas that surround the bridge between ourselves as Puerto Ricans and our relationship with the US. We are re-created and re-identified here, wearing our land and moving pieces of it into the "mainland".

For my process, l approached the designs with the intention of creating armor-like costumes for these carnival characters, using mostly natural materials as the protagonists. I thought of shells as both weapons and protectors. I designed the first layer of these garments made out of oyster shells that I gathered in Loíza. I attached different sea shells, conch shells and oysters into gloves and shoes of the characters as well. The cabuya technique or traditional rope making out of eneas (cattaill plant) is implemented in this work. I am using a metal wire structure to create the silhouettes of each character in a re-envisioned way. I collaborated with Gaby Sánchez Deniza who taught me the technique of the rope making, gathering, and processing the materials of eneas and lengua de vaca (snake plant) and assisted in the process of creation of the pieces. 

The traditional Taíno indigenous ceramic technique is also present in the masks of the characters. I worked with long time master ceramist artist Alice Chéveres. Together, we collected, processed and worked on the pieces at Taller Cabachuelas in Morovis, Puerto Rico. I did the sculptures and

Alice made Taíno symbols around the faces of the masks. We later fired the pieces in an open fire. Master artisan Jasmine Rivera worked on the traditional textiles based on the Soles de Naranjito technique. We collaborated in the making of the designs and decided to base them in shapes and patterns from the shields of each of the cities that the characters are based on. Jasmine played with the weaving, creating new patterns based on the older designs, and created the bat wings of the vejigantes characters and the cape of the caballero character.

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Special thanks to my family and friends who help me and support me throughout my process. Thank you to my sister Ana Cristina Sanabria for photographing, my mom and dad for being the best production assistants ever and my partner Santiago Alvarez for helping me with the editing of the photos. Thanks Rocío Cáliz  and Antonio Lugo for the building support as well!