PUT YOUR FACE NEXT TO MINE I WANT TO FEEL YOU BREATHE

On view, August 2- September 1
First Friday reception, August 2, 6 – 10 pm 

Practice Gallery is pleased to present Put your face next to mine I want to feel you breathe by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez. In reaction to hurricane Maria, the negligence of political bodies, and the resilience of the people, this work is about patterns of migration in the Latinx diaspora. Focusing on Gonzalez’s hometown el Barrio Espino in Añasco, Puerto Rico, these pieces are collaborations with her family. They thread through her connection and dislocation to family and land, presenting visuals of day-to-day rhythms to connect and document this relationship.

“This work is dedicated to those who found ways to become people again, to those who didn't and are still struggling, and the 4,645 lives we lost but still carry with us. You are invited to glimpse at what we've endured inside and outside the island of Puerto Rico. There will be discomfort, light tenderness, we will be loud and unapologetic.”

Currently an interdisciplinary MFA student at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Gonzalez works with photography, video, performance, land, architectural sculpture, and installation. Her interest in distance, displacement, citizenship, colonialism, and family informs her work and research around Latinx identity. She studies what it means to be a person who bridges two cultures both physically and philosophically, and attempts to reconstruct the forced interruption that is embedded in the complexities of Latinx Identity in her work.