Nostalgia and Cultural Reconnection: Edra Soto at The Sculpture Center

Nostalgia gets a bad rap. We think of it as sappy, perhaps, a self-indulgent waste of time. But there’s another aspect of reveling in one’s past, of longing for one’s roots: For a person who has left one place for another in search of opportunity, or one who has blood connection to a place they’ve perhaps never known, it’s reconnection with culture that enriches life and lets us all know we belong. That’s especially important when people assimilate into a new culture—new language, new music, new clothes. It doesn’t matter what culture you come from: connection to it is part of being human.

Edra Soto’s work is about that, and it’s made for these tumultuous times, with some of the nation’s most pressing issues at its heart. Born in Puerto Rico, the Chicago-based artist uses community engagement and architectural references to her homeland to explore the impacts of socioeconomic and cultural oppression, and colonialism–especially the erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. It engages people, tells a story, and even makes a useful, durable piece of infrastructure, all with the building blocks of cultural connection.

So it was a relief to hear that an NEA grant in support of her exhibition at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland—a grant that the Trump administration subsequently cancelled—would come through after all. The Sculpture Center was far down the road when word of the cancellation arrived, which means they wouldn’t recover tens of thousands of dollars already spent. But director Grace Chin appealed and got the money re-instated. So that’s good news. And if you haven’t yet seen Soto’s La Casa de Todos, or the accompanying exhibition of art by Northeast Ohio artists, La Casa Compartida, and if you haven’t found a copy of the journal of poetry and art that goes with it, or heard about the bus shelter Soto designed for the Clark Fulton neighborhood (which will be officially unveiled in the Fall) you should check out what significant investment in art can do. Edra Soto’s La Casa de Todos was funded by grants from both the Joyce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

It’s a project in four parts. First, there’s Soto’s own exhibition, La Casa de Todos—Everyone’s Home, an installation that draws on architectural motifs from Puerto Rico—a style of space-defining screens that are common around marquesinas there (porches). The marquesinas are defined by rejas (wrought iron screens) and quiebrasoles (decorative, cast concrete blocks)—both of which play prominently in Soto’s work. Second, there’s a printed journal of poetry and images—La Casa de Todos—published in English with Spanish translations by Raul Lopez, which is in the process of being distributed around the region.  Third, there’s an exhibit of art by Clevelanders—people of Latin descent and other People of Color—curated by Edra Soto, Sculpture Center director Grace Chin, and artist Hector Castellanos-Lara. And finally, there is a bus shelter designed by Soto—a permanent addition to the Cleveland landscape—which will be installed in the Clark Fulton neighborhood.

Soto’s primary installation at The Sculpture Center has at its center a walk-through space evocative of a marquesina, defined by colorful rejas in bright pink, blue, and white. The triangular pattern of the screens is reminiscent of geometric abstraction. Just like the porches of Lakewood or Cleveland Heights, marquesinas are transitional spaces, both private and public at the same time, where neighbors can interact, on controlled terms. In a way the marquesina is what the title of the exhibition describes: it is everyone’s house. People enjoying the breeze while they sit with morning coffee, or playing dominos might, for example, chat with dog walkers or other passers-by. They make for friendly, connected neighborhoods.

The distinctive style of the rejas and marquesinas might be an easily forgettable, quotidian detail of Puerto Rican style. Who thinks about porch screens? But the fact is that they are distinctive, and they do evoke the place. It’s easy to imagine that for people who lived in a city with that style, seeing it would be transporting, like a fondly remembered scent. For people who have that in their family history but not their personal memory, learning this detail of culture bolsters a sense of community and–by enriching understanding–combats stereotypes.

Significant components of the whole project are about engaging Cleveland artists and writers. Soto visited Cleveland and began meeting artists of the region—mostly artists of Latine descent—in Summer, 2024. She met artists, looked at their work, and with Sculpture Center director Grace Chin and Cleveland artist Hector Castellanos-Lara curated the second component of the project, a parallel exhibition, La Casa Compartida—The Home We Share.  Artists include Ewuresi Archer Nathalie Bermudez Orlando Caraballo, Laura Camila Medina, James Negron, Maya Peroune, Dante Rodriguez, Oliver C/ St. Clair, Ariel Vergez, and Gina Washington.

(Disclosure: CAN Journal has two direct connections with the exhibit: James Negron is CAN’s development and newsletter manager, and Gina Washington is a member of the Board of Directors.)

Something all these works in La Casa Compartida have in common with each other and the work of Edra Soto is a sense of ancestry, family and heritage, in some form. Orlando Caraballo’s installation of four framed images and a well-worn machete shows it through symbols and images of customs, labor, and family.  The machete itself implies labor, and immediately above it a photo shows men swinging machetes to cut sugar cane in the background. In the foreground is an image of a man standing with some pride in front of a big American car. How do you provide for your family? You work.  Another image shows a smiling family gathered close, flanked by a palm frond behind and above, and in the foreground a boy in a colorful striped poncho. All these details evoke a homeland and family history. Balanced on top of each frame is single domino, a popular game in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in Latin America: a token of good times, sitting around a table with family or friends.

Ewuresi Archer’s Alluring Souls from the Past series of 15 prints uses its medium and form to evoke what has become a nostalgic thing—a Polaroid snapshot. But these are screen prints, not Polaroids. She’s created the effect by the size and shape of the paper she printed on, and the size of its margins—the bottom being about three times the width of the top and sides. The over-simple, pixelated color separation is a nice wink at the screen printing process. Each “Polaroid” has a name or nickname or some other note hand-written in the bottom margin—an identity, as if to ensure that years later this person in the image will be remembered. Whether it’s Kama, or Lady Sunday, or Rawlings, or Auntie Le, the next generation will know. 

A third element of Soto’s project is a broadsheet-sized, newsprint publication, of the same title as her exhibition. It includes images by 11 artists—Soto herself, and ten Clevelanders. Along with them are poetry and prose by seven writers.  The well known Cleveland Slam poet Eric Odum appears twice, addressing the force of cultural legacy in two poems. Bomba is a tough-love pep talk chastising the listener not to give up, but to keep going forward:

How Dare You-
-try to give up.
With all this blood in you
All them ancestors under your skin
All that sand packed into your DNA
[ . . . ]
When it is too much to bare
Stop forgetting that there is a whole tribe in your blood
Banging drums to urge your heart forward.

The publication is no small thing. In addition to gathering the material, hiring a translator, and designing with nods to the reja motif, The Sculpture Center printed 5,000 copies and is distributing them around town.

A final element of Soto’s work here will be a permanent, sculptural bus shelter, to be installed in the Clark Fulton neighborhood, near MetroHealth, in the heart of Cleveland’s Puerto Rican and LatinX community. It will be unveiled during a celebration in front of MetroHealth’s Glick Center entrance from 5:30 to 8 pm Thursday, September 18. The bus shelter will be built of cast concrete in a style evocative of quiebrasoles  (decorative, cast concrete blocks) used in Puerto Rico marquesinas and other architectural features. In addition to being a functional part of the urban landscape, and in addition to reminding Puerto Rican neighbors a little bit of their homeland or family history, it will be a lasting monument to Edra Soto’s first major project in the Midwest, outside of her Chicago home. Board member Julie Schenkelberg brought Soto to The Sculpture Center’s attention. And that’s great for Cleveland, because Soto is a rising star. A quick look at her bio reveals solo shows at Comfort Station, Chicago; Maine College of Art & Design; Morgan Lehman Gallery, NY; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago;  and the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Diego, all in the last two years.

La Casa de Todos is not only about culture, but specifically about American culture: Puerto Rico, of course, is a US territory and has been for more than a century. Cleveland and nearby Lorain have sizeable Puerto Rican populations, for exactly the reasons that drive so much migration: people came looking for a better life, leaving the Island of Enchantment behind in order to find jobs in steel mills and factories.  From the nation’s founders, to the Eastern Europeans of a century ago, to the immigrants from all over the globe today, is there anything more American? This is exactly the kind of thing the National Endowment for the Arts should be funding.

Edra Soto: La Casa de Todos / Everyone’s Home
May 16 – July 19, 2025

The Sculpture Center
12210 Euclid Ave
Cleveland, OH 44106

Gallery Tour and Artist Talk:
Laura Camilla Medina, Orlando Caraballo, and Nathalie Bermudez
5:30 – 7 pm Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Sculptural Bus Shelter Unveiling and Celebration
5:30 – 8 pm Thursday, September 18
In front of the Glick Center entrance at MetroHealth