Rhode Island School of Design
Specialisms: Printmaking / Fine Art / Contemporary Craft
Location: San Juan, Puerto Rico
First Name: Mariana
Last Name: Ramos Ortiz
Specialisms: Printmaking / Fine Art / Contemporary Craft
Sectors: / Fine Art/Photography/Craft
My Location: San Juan, Puerto Rico
University / College: Rhode Island School of Design
Course / Program Title: Printmaking MFA
Mariana Ramos Ortiz (b.1997| she/her/they/them) was born and raised in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. In 2015, they began their studies in Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras. During their junior year in college they were displaced by Hurricane María and moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where they received a full scholarship to attend Brown University for a year. Since then, they live in a constant state of flux, traveling back to the archipelago for short visits and permanently living in the United States. They received a BA from the University of Puerto Rico in 2019 and an MFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2021.
“El suelo en duelo” is a series of visual works that outline resistance tactics against colonialism in the context of the United State’s occupation of Puerto Rico. Using sand as my weapon of choice, I articulate relationships between legibility as a condition of colonialism, play as a tactic for resistance, and how these strategies construct the experience and perceptions of the colonial subject and landscape. The ground becomes an active agent, a space of resistance, and a place for mourning our histories. Sand occupies without hesitation. It slips between our toes and invades the most intimate parts of our bodies. By shifting and blurring sand refuses legibility, countering the flattened readings of historically othered spaces essentialized by the process of colonization. As a tactic of defense, it dissipates or compacts, delineating the shore between the recognized and recognizable. It reclaims what has been made visible and consumed by others. Sand proposes a strategic retaliation and a rupture between the legible and illegible. El suelo en duelo translates to both “The dueling ground” and “The mourning ground.”