KANSAS CITY, MO.- Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art announced the place of dwelling, a newly commissioned, site-responsive installation by Edra Soto, opening January 30 in the Museum’s central atrium. Created for the tenth anniversary of the Atrium Project, the exhibition represents a defining moment in the project as both a celebration of ten years of commissions and its first major, large-scale, architectural and sculptural installation in the series. It will be on view through March 7, 2027.

Edra Soto (b. 1971) is an artist and educator born in Puerto Rico and based in Chicago. Her interdisciplinary practice spans installation, sculpture, public art, and architectural intervention, drawing deeply from the decorative, architectural, and cultural landscapes of her home. Soto’s work recontextualizes everyday functional objects—such as wrought-iron screens, plastic lawn furniture, and electric fans—to evoke ideas of home, memory, labor, belief, and belonging.

Soto’s installation, the place of dwelling, is a direct response to the Museum’s original 1994 Gunnar Birkerts–designed atrium. Engaging the tabernacle-like central space, Soto invests the architecture with personal memories drawn from her Catholic upbringing, a gesture that both questions systems of colonial indoctrination and honors sacred sites as places filled with signs, symbols, and guidance. By infusing vernacular design with sacred symbolism, Soto proposes a parallel between art museums and churches as similarly charged spaces for reflection, gathering, and the pursuit of higher meaning.

"Edra’s work is unique in the way it envelops viewers; they become immersed in the artwork and all its references to daily life in Puerto Rico; viewers become participants in the work’s meaning,” explains Kevin Moore, guest curator of the exhibition.

Edra Soto adds, “My architectural intervention in Kemper’s atrium reflects my relationship to the church growing up in Puerto Rico and how meaning is created through spaces and rituals. My parents invested a lot of meanings in objects they made for the home—ceramics, stained glass. Every object in this exhibition is inspired by my migration story and rooted in the idea that home, too, is a sacred space and an acknowledgment of the lives of working-class people.”

Organized by Kevin Moore, Independent Curator, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art