Photos on a family wall in Edra Soto’s childhood home (2020). 
Soto as a child at the Catholic church Parroquia Nuestra Señora de la Providencia, in Puerto Rico. 
Breeze blocks at Soto’s childhood home, accentuated with a plastic backing her parents added for privacy. 
Soto’s mother, Luisa V. de Soto (2022).
Edra Soto is a Chicago-based artist whose exhibition “Graft” is on view in New York’s Central Park through August 24.
“I grew up with my mom, dad, and brother in a lower-middle-class community in the metropolitan area of Puerto Rico, in the San Juan area. It was a gated community, and all the houses in it were built around the fifties and the sixties. I went to the same school, located right in front of the neighborhood, from kindergarten to my senior year. My entire life was very much contained in this community.
The house had a big wall of breeze blocks that fenced it in from the outside. Because the homes were laid out right next to each other, the breeze blocks gave visibility to the neighbor’s house. For more privacy, my parents made a kind of plastic fence of corrugated panels, and placed it behind the breeze blocks, creating a dramatic shadow of the blocks’ decorative motif. The furniture inside was wicker and rattan, and also wood.
My parents set the tone for what life was like inside the house. They were very loving people, very protective—maybe overprotective—and strict. The environment felt a bit random. We had a living room with a dining table, and the dining table ended up becoming a place for storing stuff. Junk things, papers, anything. When I was in college, I made a painting about this, called ‘New Centerpiece’: a dining table that had a TV placed in the middle of it. There were televisions everywhere.
The house was constantly in flux because there was so much stuff, and people, around. My mother had a cake business as well as a nursery that she ran from our home; my father made furniture; together they ran a commercial ceramic business mostly out of our backyard.
What made it a successful home, I believe, is love. That was the glue, really, and perhaps the only thing [that held it together]. There were things going on that I wasn’t fully aware of. Things I find I have in common with other people from the same time and socioeconomic status.
A window view at Paraíso Dorado in Dorado, Puerto Rico (2023). 
The latest iteration of “Graft” (2024), made of corten steel and terrazzo, installed at an entrance of New York’s Central Park. 
Unfired ceramics by Soto’s parents, stored in the garage of her childhood home.
If you know my work, you know that I have dedicated my life to documenting the houses of this community, and houses of communities that are similar to it. The houses are made in concrete, and usually accompanied by, or complemented by, rejas, or wrought-iron gates. You will find this style of home everywhere: They are the epitome of lower- and middle-class Puerto Ricans.
I never questioned rejas, this very particular aspect of the homes, until later on in life, about fifteen years after doing my MFA. Why did [these gates] end up being such a big part of Puerto Rico’s cultural identity? I was also thinking about migration for the first time, and about what it means to me. How do I express migration? And I came up with this idea, with this project that I’ve been developing for the last dozen years, called ‘Graft.’
I’m sure you are very aware how many artists explore the theme of migration, of belonging. It is such a conundrum, right? It’s something that follows us not only physically, but also psychologically, and in all kinds of ways. Like how we feel completely convinced that the world is ours, while what is making us believe that is very political.
Thinking about rejas made me then question where their motifs [repeating stars, circles, and other shapes] come from, who made them, and why most of the houses from lower-middle-class communities of Puerto Rico—perhaps more appropriately described as working-class communities of Puerto Rico—have these characteristics.
In my research, I found this monograph by a professor named Jorge Ortiz-Colom titled The African Influence in the Design-Build Edification of Puerto Rico. He writes about criolla architecture, which incorporates quiebrasoles, or breeze blocks, and rejas. And he declares that these motifs originated from sub-Saharan Africa, and through enslaved people who came to Puerto Rico to work in the plantations during the rise of colonialism, [and brought these motifs with them]. He argues that [the motifs’ origin] was largely overlooked by historians due to the [assumption] that ‘Africans could not transplant their ancestral ways of life under the inhumane conditions of their transfer and the lack of freedom of their new home.’
It was previously thought that the decorative architecture was an amalgamation of European features that had undergone a tropicalization through the Western lens. He also writes that, due to the growing commercial sugar trade between the U.S. and Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth century, the style of criolla architecture was rampantly appropriated in the southern U.S., and according to him, sometimes even purchased outright as entire homes from Puerto Rico, which were then relocated to the U.S. Finding this information turned my world upside down, and set the tone [for my work], which is about advocating for and celebrating working-class communities.
Today, my childhood home is my house: I’m one of the owners, with my brother, who’s living there now. I went through Hurricane Maria in that house with my mother. After the hurricane, the environment really perished. The house had to be completely rehabilitated.
It still holds some artifacts, though, including a collection of my parents’ ceramics that were cast, but not fired, in the garage. Frozen in time. I told my brother to never [remove] them. Someday I am going to show them. They’re going to be a part of my work. So they are just there, waiting for me.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. (Photo of “Graft” by Nicholas Knight and courtesy Public Art Fund; all other photos courtesy Edra Soto)