By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN<\/p>\n
(CNN) \u2014 <\/b>Generally speaking, you can\u2019t sit on the art in a museum. But in one gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago \u2014 which is currently staged to resemble a karaoke bar complete with a disco ball, stage and jukebox \u2014 three plastic chairs, upholstered with the face of Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, are waiting for you to rest between songs.<\/p>\n
Part of the exhibition \u201cDancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaet\u00f3n<\/a>,\u201d the chairs are the work of the artist Edra Soto, who transforms the objects of her childhood and the everyday design and architecture found in Puerto Rico into artworks and spaces that evoke life on the small island. She\u2019s mounted flat box fans that keep families cool in the shapes of Christian crosses; interpreted the colorful ubiquitous ironwork fences that demarcate home and street into towering sculptures; and placed tiny keyholes in her sculptures that reveal quiet photos of Puerto Rican houses inside.<\/p>\n \u201cAll these objects are rooted in the home,\u201d she said in a video call from her home in Chicago, explaining that she is always thinking about them \u201cin a way that is higher than their assigned function.\u201d<\/p>\n Together, her works often create contemplative spaces, and lately, she\u2019s delved more into the spiritual, with her own Catholic upbringing influencing the \u201ctabernacle-like\u201d atrium that is central to her current show<\/a> at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, as well as her newest exhibition at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Her series of Bad Bunny chairs, then, or \u201cBB chairs,\u201d made over the past year and a half, are perhaps representative of a different kind of devotion as the Puerto Rican singer has reached staggering new levels of fame. (His 2022 album \u201cUn Verano Sin Ti\u201d is the highest-streamed album in Spotify\u2019s 20-year history.) In \u201cDancing the Revolution,\u201d he makes multiple appearances in the show, which is dedicated to the visual history and political power of Caribbean music and dance. The exhibition came to be in the wake of the summer of 2019, when mass protests over years of government corruption led to the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rossell\u00f3 \u2014demonstrations in which Bad Bunny became a central figure<\/a> as he paused his tour to join the movement. In one monumental photograph in the exhibition, he stands tall above the crowd in San Juan waving the Puerto Rican flag, reminiscent of Delacroix\u2019s \u201cLiberty Leading the People,\u201d curator Carla Acevedo-Yates explained during an exhibition walkthrough.<\/p>\n For Soto, she has been impressed with the smart and meaningful ways in which Bad Bunny communicates to Puerto Ricans \u2014 quite literally, as she recalled his appearance on the local news<\/a> last year where he presented top stories and even the weather forecast. Her \u201cBB Chairs\u201d \u2014 outfitted in bootleg fabrics featuring the singer with sunglasses and buzz cuts \u2014 have been a tongue-in-cheek nod to both the plastic white chair ubiquitous to the island and the performer\u2019s deep connection to his home. In addition to their appearances at the Kemper Museum and MCA Chicago, she arranged them on a pedestal with box fans<\/a> at the art fair EXPO Chicago last year, drawing crowds and news cameras.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this idea a whole year before I made them,\u201d she said. \u201cI was doubting myself. I was thinking maybe this is too on the nose.\u201d<\/p>\n But friends excitedly reached out to Soto when Bad Bunny released the now history-making, Grammy Award-winning album \u201cDeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS.\u201d The album cover featured two empty white lawn chairs \u2014 an evocative symbol of home and belonging in Puerto Rico \u2014 and they had significance to Soto\u2019s practice, too. Over the past decade, she upholstered plastic chairs with vibrant towels of tigers and lush jungles that had exhibited in shows and been written about by art publications. Her chairs were inspired by her husband\u2019s own furniture business, but with the realization that her materials would be different.<\/p>\n \u201cThe furniture that I grew up with was wicker and plastic,\u201d she explained. \u201cI asked myself what my chair would look like if I was making a chair.\u201d She said she couldn\u2019t relate to high-end materials, and began thinking about the fantasy of luxury in both the practice of upholstery and the colorful, if culturally inaccurate, images associated with the tropics.<\/p>\n Not too on the nose, then, she decided, to splash the face of Puerto Rico\u2019s biggest star on the chairs. After all, they had rapidly become central to his own visual iconography, and representative of the kitschy merchandise celebrities inspire when their fandom becomes fervent. She recalled a shop near her studio that was filled \u201ctop to bottom\u201d with images of his face across all of its merchandise. \u201cIt was (like) hallucinating; it was incredible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But that shop no longer existed, and Soto purchased the fabrics online for her set of chairs, some 15 in total. She has since been unable to locate more of the same \u2014 perhaps because of Bad Bunny\u2019s popularity, or maybe copyright issues. Because of that, the set is unintentionally a limited edition for now, and at the MCA Chicago, she upholstered them again in plastic to keep them safe. Visitors can take a seat while browsing the exhibition \u2014 or during the museum\u2019s planned karaoke nights.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not able to recreate them the way they are. I love the quality of the cheap fabric, just as an aesthetic that is very specific,\u201d she said. At one point, she thought she found them again, only to be disappointed in the end. \u201cI actually reordered and they never arrived. I don\u2019t know what happened with my money,\u201d she explained, laughing.<\/p>\n The-CNN-Wire
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