Natalia Almonte

Visual Description: A dark room with a projection that goes from texts to drawn images all in white on the wall, a pile of blue tarp on the floor with a stick in the middle resembling a used mop, are paired with construction blue lights hanging and placed throughout the room with orange extension and power cords. There is another projection on a curtain and many electronic devices with screens and everyday objects dispersed throughout the room, all elements of a large floor installation.

Descripción Visual: Una habitación oscura con una proyección que va desde texto hasta imágenes dibujadas todas en blanco en la pared, un montón de carpas plasticas azules en el suelo con un palo en el medio asemejan a una fregona usada, con luces azules de construcción colgando y colocadas en toda la habitación con cables de alimentación de ecorriente naranjas. Hay otra proyección en una cortina y muchos dispositivos electrónicos con pantallas y objetos cotidianos dispersos por toda la habitación, todos elementos de una gran instalación de suelo.

About

Natalia Almonte (b. 1988, Puerto Rico) is an artist and independent curator based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design (NY), and an MA in Art History and the Art Market: Modern and Contemporary Art from Christie’s Education (NY), where she was granted the Alumni Association Award for Contemporary Art Connoisseurship. Almonte has exhibited in group shows in New York, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, and Greece, as well as solo shows in Puerto Rico and Seattle. She has also done residencies in France, Mexico, and the United States

In 2018, Almonte, alongside artist Nicole Economides, co-founded Paradoxluxe, a collective that critically engages with the reductive representations of Greece and Puerto Rico. They co-curated exhibitions at the Arnold & Sheila Aronson Galleries in Manhattan, The Real House, an ephemeral artist house in Brooklyn, New York, and at The National Academy of Science in Washington D.C. They are currently curating an upcoming exhibition opening in the Fall of 2024 in The Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The artist coined the term “melancolonia” to describe when colonialism transcends the island body to the collective psyche. Almonte's site-specific installations encompass video, sound, light, text, found objects, and sculptures that reconfigure memories, archival material, and contemporary culture. She emphasizes Puerto Rico’s cycle of neglect while simultaneously maintaining that a chronic state of dissonance and subjectivity is actually a space of infinite possibilities.