NEW YORK, NY.- Ruiz-Healy Art opened Ariel René Jackson & Lina Puerta: Woven Land. This is the first exhibition for both artists with Ruiz-Healy Art. Woven Land focuses on the relationship between humans, labor, and land. Ariel René Jackson utilizes found objects, printing, painting, and fiber work to create scenes and experiences from their cultural past. Lina Puerta creates collages, handmade- paper paintings, and wall hangings to examine the relationship between nature and the human-made.

Puerta’s work engages themes of food justice, xenophobia, hyper-consumerism, and ancestral knowledge. Featured in the exhibition are Puerta’s Latinx Farmworkers in the US tapestry series which combines cotton and linen paper pulp with recycled fabrics and paint. Latinx Farmworkers in the US highlight the extreme physical labor and hardship demanded by industrial agricultural systems, contrasted against the poetic life cycle of the crops themselves. Writer and curator Coco Dolle writes, “Puerta’s work falls into the global movement and legacy of Latin American artists and activists channeling their inner suffering and collective pathos or anger onto their works… At the core of these movements is a desperate yearning for freedom from European imperialism, machismo, and American big-stick diplomacy.”

An Artpace International Artist in Residence, Jackson’s practice considers land and landscape as sites of internal representation. Themes of colorism, nationality, and inheritance are also present in their work which incorporates different mediums. The artist’s mixed media paintings utilize organic material such as soil and chalk, while their fiber work integrates quilting traditions with silk screen printing. Writer and curator Lise Ragbir writes, “Jackson spent formative time in rural Louisiana where their grandparents were Black farmers. Bearing witness to their toil on family land inspired a curiosity about the notion of legacy, and the ways in which stories are passed down.”