HARTFORD, CONN.- The Wadsworth presents Sofía Gallisá Muriente with the latest installation in the long-running MATRIX series showcasing emerging contemporary artists. Born and based in Puerto Rico, Gallisá is internationally recognized for works that address urgent topics such as climate change and neo-colonialism. In her most recent work, the artist focuses on the Águila Blanca (White Eagle) heist of 1983, (also known as the Great Wells Fargo heist) at the time the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. Perpetrated by Puerto Rican nationalist and Hartford native Víctor Gerena, this event took place just a few miles from the Wadsworth. By weaving documentary filmmaking techniques with experimental approaches to archival materials, Gallisá offers alternative ways to remember the histories of her island and its diaspora. Gallisá is the first artist from Puerto Rico to be featured in the MATRIX program.

“It is an honor to bring Gallisá’s profound work to the Wadsworth and even more exciting that she has made a new body of work about Hartford,” said Jared Quinton, Emily Hall Tremaine Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. “Gallisá asks important questions about the role of images in our contemporary landscape, where straightforward representation seems increasingly to be failing. Her works offer a compelling blend of critique and poetry, grounding open-ended experimentation in rigorous, historical research.

Rather than offer a straightforward documentary, Gallisá encourages viewers to think about how histories are told, including the ways in which they are illustrated. Gallisá’s video is accompanied by photographic works based on archival police films and media coverage of the trial and its aftermath. To offer an alternative telling of the 1983 heist story, Gallisá interviewed local residents who knew Víctor and his mother Gloria, researched archival images, and shot video footage across the greater Hartford region—including local tobacco farms that once employed waves of Puerto Rican migrant workers.

Sofía Gallisá Muriente (b. 1986, San Juan, PR) employs text, image, and archive as medium and subject, exploring their poetic and political implications. Gallisá has been a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute, Cisneros Institute at MoMA, Puerto Rican Arts Initiative, Annenberg Media Lab at USC, and the Flaherty Seminar, and participated in residencies with the Vieques Historical Archive, Alice Yard (Trinidad & Tobago), FAARA (Uruguay), and Fonderie Darling (Montreal), among others. She has exhibited at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York; Documenta, Kassel; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Queens Museum, New York; Savvy Contemporary, Berlin; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan; and galleries including Km 0.2 and Embajada, both San Juan. From 2014 to 2020, she co-directed the artist-run organization Beta-Local. In 2023 she was awarded the Latinx Artist Fellowship, and she is a United States Artists Fellow for 2024-25.