Last year, Edra Soto had just about the best year an artist can have: in addition to solo shows at Engage Projects, Cleve Carney Museum and Hyde Park Art Center, her work was shown at New York’s LatchKey Gallery and acquired by the Whitney Museum. The coming of a new year did little to slow her momentum: she’s capping off 2024 with a large-scale installation at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art and solo showcases at Portland, Maine’s ICA and Chicago’s own Comfort Station.
Soto’s meteoric rise in the past decade can be attributed to the proliferation of her “Graft” series, which uses architectural motifs—wrought-iron gates called rejas and concrete fences known as quiebrasoles—that are ubiquitous in her birthplace, Puerto Rico. In “grafting” (as one might with skin) these forms of vernacular architecture from Puerto Rico to stateside art venues, Soto ignites a debate concerning the role which her island home plays in the larger culture and economy of the United States.
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