At Sagrado, the well-being of our community comes first. We continue to monitor the development of events related to the worldwide spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). As a precautionary measure, Sagrado is implementing the practice of social distancing. Therefore, the Art Gallery will remain closed until further notice. Over the years, we have created a community that comes together to appreciate different aesthetic experiences. We want to continue this without putting our visitors at risk. Therefore, we are making this experience available online. Among the new offerings, we share the work of Amber Robles Gordon, who was our visiting artist during the fall semester and, from that experience, has created new works under the title "Place of Breath and Birth".

Amber Robles-Gordon is a mixed media visual artist. Known for recontextualizing non-traditional materials, their assemblies, large sculptures, installations, and public works of art, to emphasize the essentiality of spirituality and temporality within life. Driven by the need to build her own distinctive path, innovate, and challenge social norms, her artwork is unconventional and unformulated. Their creations are representative of their personal experiences and the paradoxes within the imbalance of male and female energies with our society. Ultimately, the intention is to examine the parallels between how humanity perceives its greatest resources, men, and women versus how we treat our possessions and the environment.

I was chosen to be an academic visiting artist from the Art Gallery, Universidad Sagrado Corazón, Santurce, Puerto Rico, (PR) this year. This opportunity meant that at the end of the academic year (April 2020) I was going to exhibit the works created from my experience while visiting Puerto Rico. Due to persistent earthquakes, and the risk they pose to the Sacred community, my exhibition was postponed, later with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, new works produced under the title A Place of Encouragement and Birth moved to a platform online.

This would be my first opportunity to exhibit in the Caribbean and deepen my relationship with my birthplace, Puerto Rico, Isla del Encanto (the enchanted island). Therefore, I have titled the exhibition, Place of Breath and Birth. The intention of this exhibition is to empower my five-year-old self. To give her the strength to fight for herself and her language. I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. My first language was Spanish, but when I was five years old I came home one day from school, and I told my mother: I no longer spoke Spanish. Thereafter, I only responded to my mother who speaks Spanish / English in English.

Later, I came to understand that I gave up my Spanish language, a critical part of my cultural identity, in order to "adapt" to a version of myself that could possibly match the prescribed box that others had for a brown-skinned girl like me. At the time, we lived on the US mainland, and we lived in an area where there were few people who looked like me and spoke Spanish. Although over time, the insults stopped; Micro-assaults, callous questions, assumptions, and judgments persisted. Throughout this life, time and time again, I have had to choose to identify with my brown /black color over the other cultural ties that unite other Spanish speakers with their culture.

Aunque, mi narrativa personal será el foco principal de estas obras de arte; Continuaré contextualizando la obra de arte dentro de los hilos políticos, socioeconómicos y ambientales que definen y a menudo se utilizan para controlar, alienar o maltratar a los puertorriqueños en general y a los afro-puertorriqueños en particular. Además, mi obra de arte trata sobre las intersecciones de la feminidad, el patriarcado, el hibridismo y el americanismo. En última instancia, espero que esta narrativa y esta obra de arte den voz a otros que caminan en tonos marrones, que respiran dentro de una forma femenina y que no se ajustan a las normas ... pero son audaces y orgullosos.