For decades Boricuas have been bringing their little pedacito de la isla to New York’s gritty urban spaces. From the casitas of el Bronx to bomba jams on the Lower East Side, the cultural bridges between the island and New York’s cityscape run deep – and thanks to the female Puerto Rican artist collective Moriviví, they just got a little deeper.
This week, Moriviví wrapped up a whirlwind residency in New York, where they used their art to reflect on the parallel struggles of Puerto Rico and US at a moment of deep uncertainty. On their first stop, the ladies of Moriviví created a series of collaborative murals inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement for Williamsburg’s El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. Featuring black bodies that seems to melt into space, and a silently powerful gaze that challenges the spectator from the canvas, the murals will line the walls of El Puente’s main building while also serving as banners for upcoming BLM protests.
Moriviví is comprised of four artists who studied together at Puerto Rico’s Escuela Especializada Central de Artes Visuales, and began collaborating on large-scale public projects back in 2013. They takes their name from the so-called shameplant that is embraced as a symbol of femininity in the Puerto Rican countryside. Most recently they made headlines when they responded to the defacement of an anti-domestic violence mural with a topless protest on the streets of Santurce.