The solo art exhibition “Embodied Memories, Ancestral Histories,” by Juana Valdés, artist and UMass Amherst Department of Art associate professor in printmaking, will open at the Sarasota Art Museum in Sarasota, Fla., on Oct. 22 and run through Feb. 11, 2024.

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Valdés will travel to Sarasota from Oct. 16-20 to complete the installation of her first solo exhibit, which begins with an early work titled “Un saco para el Viejo” (A Coat for the Old Man, 1993), a suit made from burlap by her mother, through which she explores her Caribbean identity, Cuban roots and African ancestry.

These pieces serve as a prologue to the story that unravels as the visitor moves through three aspects of her work: “The History of Migration,” “Representation and Subjectivity” (gender and the feminine body) and “Materiality” (working with non-traditional materials and challenging the canon of art).

For 30 years, Valdés has transformed ideas, thoughts, and feelings into works of art anchored in stories, many of which are inspired by her personal experiences related to her Afro-Cuban heritage. Through many of the works featured in the exhibition, she has generated a voice and a discourse inspired by themes such as colonization’s history and migration’s impact. Another significant theme is the issue of gender and the representation of the feminine body. Through several works, notably the installation “Sweet Honesty-Tender Pink” (1997), Valdés invites the public to reflect on the objectification of the female body and the “whitening of race” as a legacy of colonialism.

Working in a range of both traditional and non-traditional media, from ceramics with all its associations of feminine and manual work to new-media, Valdés aims to communicate ideas of the personal and subjective while at the same time challenging the canon of art. Her audiovisual work highlights her oeuvre as an archive through which she analyzes and recodifies topics that include transnationalism, migration, race, gender and discrimination at work, and the Latinx discourse she deals with from her experience as an Afro-Cuban woman living in the United States.

More information about Valdés’ exhibition can be found on the Sarasota Art Museum website.