9/9 @ 6 PM | Lina Puerta: "La Sierpe"
About this Event
Developed over the course of Puerta’s two-year residency, La Sierpe marks the culmination of an extended period of research, experimentation, and artistic production. Centered on the serpent as an ancient symbol of cyclical time, transformation, and collective renewal, the exhibition invites visitors into an immersive environment where inherited ways of seeing give way to new possibilities for connection. Throughout the exhibition, the serpent serves as both a guide and a guardian, illuminating the relationships among ancestral knowledge, ecological balance, and collective care.
The exhibition debuts a significant new body of work that expands Puerta's ongoing exploration of ancestral knowledge, environmental stewardship, and cultural memory. Featured are recent works from her acclaimed Portales series, which draw upon Indigenous Colombian symbols while incorporating materials associated with Western consumer culture. Through intricate hand stitching, machine sewing, reclaimed food packaging, repurposed textiles, jewelry, and natural materials traditionally associated with adornment and spiritual protection, Puerta creates richly layered works that bridge ancestral traditions and contemporary ecological and social concerns.
At the heart of the exhibition is a monumental 42-foot suspended serpent sculpture. Occupying the gallery as both an architectural intervention and a symbolic presence, the work transforms the space into a site of reflection and passage, inviting viewers to contemplate cycles of resilience, renewal, and collective responsibility. Surrounding this central work are additional woven works created both independently by the artist and through collaborative processes. Throughout the exhibition, Puerta incorporates colorful woven produce bags—ubiquitous throughout much of the Global South—as a recurring material. These everyday objects form the body of the monumental serpent sculpture and are woven into the quilted tapestry that drapes the windows of the sun-filled gallery, transforming familiar materials into symbols of interconnection and cross-cultural collective experience.
La Sierpe is the culminating exhibition of Puerta’s participation in the PES Artist In Residence Program, a two-year residency that provides artists with sustained support for ambitious creative research, experimentation, and community engagement. By fostering meaningful dialogue between artists and the public, the program encourages the development of new work that addresses urgent social, cultural, and environmental issues. Puerta’s exhibition exemplifies the transformative possibilities of long-term artistic inquiry and institutional support.
About the Artist
Drawing on her Colombian-American heritage, Lina Puerta is a multidisciplinary mixed-media artist whose work explores the intersections of the natural and the human-made, engaging themes of food justice, xenophobia, hyper-consumerism, migration, and ancestral knowledge. Working across sculpture, installation, collage, handmade paper, and textile practices, she incorporates reclaimed, organic, and found materials to reveal the transformative potential embedded within everyday objects.
Born in New Jersey, raised in Colombia, and now based in New York City and Newark, Puerta holds a Master of Science in Art Education from the City University of New York. Her work has been exhibited at the New York Botanical Garden, Ford Foundation Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, the Bronx Museum, 21c Museum Hotels, and the MSU Broad Art Museum. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Craft/Sculpture and the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant. Puerta has participated in residencies at Dieu Donné, Art Omi, Smack Mellon, the Joan Mitchell Center, the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling, and Project for Empty Space, and is currently developing a public commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
About Project for Empty Space
Project for Empty Space (PES) is a multifaceted arts organization that includes Exhibitions, Artists Residencies, Public Art initiatives, subsidized Artist Studios, and Artist Professional Development/Granting opportunities. Our programs lean into social discourse, including narratives that have been historically and systemically erased. We strive to course-correct historic instances of forced marginality, in-equity, and in-visibility. Today, in our efforts to support socially-oriented artists, we maintain a commitment to holding space for both looking back and looking to new potentials and futures.
The organization's Artist In Residence Program provides artists with the time, space, resources, and institutional support needed to develop ambitious new work while fostering meaningful connections with local communities. By prioritizing experimentation, collaboration, and public engagement, Project for Empty Space advances artistic practices that challenge inequity, amplify underrepresented voices, and imagine more just and inclusive futures.
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