Inflexiones de temporada / Seasonal Inflections
Created for HATAK
By Sarabel Santos-Negrón

Artist statement for the work:

The images presented here are part of the project Inflexiones de temporada / Seasonal Inflections; a way to remember the change of the atmosphere from my current location in Bayamón, Puerto Rico.

I seek to safeguard a visual memory of how I observe the atmosphere at different times of the day during the months that make up the hurricane season in Puerto Rico, from May to November 2021.

During this season, over many years we have been on the lookout for any change or development of atmospheric systems.

There is a collective sense, because of the post-traumatic stress of recent hurricanes and because we have a need to predict what might happen in the future, which leads us to be constantly on the lookout.

But are we really aware? What do we use to know the state of the weather? We observe?

The accessibility of tracking systems for climatological issues has made us trust and depend almost at all on these forecasts that have been developed largely as a way of understanding / controlling nature and in search of a “good for the human being ”. Instead, the immediate experience of observing has taken a back seat. We withdraw each time from our senses and therefore from nature.

In these three images developed especially for the HATAK exhibition, I somewhat satirize the idea of how we forecast the weather from inner space and how the same atmosphere floods the space where we may be safer.

About the artist:
Born Bayamón, Puerto Rico, 1984

Sarabel Santos-Negrón is a visual artist, educator and museum professional. Her work is informed by the experience and memory of the natural and social landscape of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

She earned an MFA in Studio Art from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore; an MAE in Museum Studies from Caribbean University, Puerto Rico; a BFA in Painting and Art History from the University of Puerto Rico; and Art History studies from Fundación Ortega y Gasset in Toledo, Spain.

Santos-Negrón has exhibited both nationally and internationally with recent shows at Chico Art Center (California), Large Arts Studios (Seattle), El Museo del Barrio (New York) and at the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art (San Juan). She has been featured as visiting lecturer at Princeton University, University of Virginia, Columbia University and the University of Cincinnati.

Santos-Negrón has participated in residencies and research programs including Caribbean Linked VI (Oranjestad, Aruba), Creativity in Place (North Carolina), Palmer Project (Bayamón), St. Mary’s Artist House (Maryland), the Herbarium of the University of Puerto Rico (San Juan), and a self-conducted residency and ongoing research project in El Paseo del Río Bayamón (Puerto Rico). She has received several awards including CERF+ grant for artists (Vermont); the BORIMIX 2019 (New York) for the social currency project Valor y Cambio; Study Fellowship (Puerto Rico); and Merit Scholarship from Maryland Institute College of Art.

She is a fine art professor, independent curator and director of the Museo de Arte de Bayamón in Puerto Rico.

Website: www.sarabelsantos.com

Instagram: @sarabelsantosnegron

north willow

north willow