Lina Puerta
Blueberries and I (from the Kinship Series), 2022
Short cotton blowouts with linen pulp paint over fabric collage on standard cotton base sheet with mixed-media additions
14 x 11 inches

Dieu Donné is pleased to release Blueberries and I (from the Kinship Series), a new Paper Variables edition by Lina Puerta. Working with Master Collaborator Amy Jacobs, the artist created a variable edition of 15 works using pulp painting and collage embedding techniques with handmade paper.

Lina Puerta explores the relationship between humans and the botanical world, interlacing the blueberry plant, native to North America, with hands not only of the gardener or crop picker but of every person. Puerta incorporates bright, festive colors of pulp paint and fabric textures to celebrate the spiritual connection between people and their natural environment. She says: “Based on the indigenous ways of the Americas, this work redirects our gaze towards the synergy between humans and the plants that provide us nourishment, joy and medicine.”

About the Artist

Drawing from her experience as a Colombian-American, Lina Puerta’s art examines the relationship between nature and the human-made, and engages in themes of food justice, xenophobia, hyper-consumerism, and ancestral knowledge. She creates mixed media sculptures, installations, collages, handmade-paper paintings and wall hangings by combining a wide range of materials, from artificial plants and paper pulp to found, personal and recycled objects.

Previously the 2019/2020 Artist-in-Residency at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling in Harlem, Puerta has also been honored with the 2017 NYFA Fellowship in Crafts/Sculpture, Fall 2017 Artist-in-Residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, the 2016 Dieu Donné Workspace Residency, Artprize-8 Sustainability Award, 2015 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, 2015 Kohler Arts Industry Residency (WI), 2014-15 Keyholder Residency at the Lower East Side Printshop, 2013-14 Smack Mellon Art Studio Program, 2014 Materials for the Arts Artist Residency, 2013 Wave Hill Winter Workspace, and the 2010 Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. The artist works and lives in New York City.

For more information, please visit her website:
https://www.linapuerta.net/