NinaJohnson

Nina Johnson presents The Ghost in the Hallway, an exhibition of mixed-media objects by Estafania Puerta that challenges how “carrier” is defined, both functionally— depicted in vessels, vitrines, and candle holders—and metaphorically, the way materials hold meaning and create personal or symbolic value. Puerta’s practice is rooted in materiality, incorporating inorganic and organic materials “to form a new poetics of transformation and translation.” Through the works in this exhibition, she explores the idea of boundary or border in her material choices and the objects she creates—what is display, or what acts as a kind of skin or exoskeleton protecting and holding something within? The complexity of these works—the variety of their materials and the range of the forms they take—create worlds all their own, layered and nuanced.

Some of the objects in this show, many of which conceptually began during Puerta’s time in Rome, were inspired by reliquaries and the sarcophagus as something that simultaneously functions as place, object, and a literary document of sorts. In the Bloom series Puerta creates mounted wall pieces using aluminum leaf, paper pulp, and stained glass that encloses a tiny cabinet of materials or drawings. Reproduction Question comprises a coffee table structure with a vitrine on the upper half containing small objects and text, enclosed by a colored Plexiglas; on the table is a canvas sculpture with a hole on top through which viewers can read the text in the vitrine.