larí garcía

larí garcía visited La Casa de Las Almas (House of the Souls) in Puerto Rico to study transcripts that recorded historical conversations between spirit mediums and the dead. Almost a century old, this center was a refuge primarily for members of the working class and women who felt excluded from the Catholic Church; today it is one of the most renowned organizations of its kind.

In Spirit of Discrimination, garcía employs sculpture and installation to depict their startling discovery of extensive misogyny and gender-based violence preserved in this, one of the most prominent Spiritualist centers in Puerto Rico. Originally drawn to this famous place to trace the strands of French Spiritism, Indigenous Caribbean knowledge, and Catholicism preserved there, garcía sought to define materiality within the immaterial. By considering the interactions between the physical and spirit worlds, they hoped to understand the practice of mediumship and the science underlying it. What was discovered and is presented in this exhibition is the discriminatory “spirits” that inhabit religious spaces, particularly formal mediumship temples.

Spirit of Discrimination incorporates structures and works produced on site. Hollow wall framing holds suspended assemblage sculpture. Newspapers and other documents are presented in a way that abruptly drops the viewer into a narrative—with or without context—and become poetic linguistic interventions throughout the gallery. garcía uses sculptural techniques of compression, piercing, and near rupture to evoke pressure, constraint, and the tension of something on the verge of breaking through. These gestures are directly informed by the narratives and conversations found within the featured transcripts.