Artist Andrea Pérez Bessin stands in front of a plant covered building. They wear glasses and look away from the camera with a neutral expression.

Santi Pérez García

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Reverence, ritual, and the queer body as holy are the common threads that run through these works. My work aims to create a visual language around queer and non-binary bodies through syncretic explorations of science, alchemy, Christian iconography, queerness, my immediate surroundings, and influences derived from Puerto Rican culture. I forge anthropomorphic amalgams of plants and animals that honor the self-fashioning present in queer bodies and the wide spectrum of gender and sex present in the natural world. Through my practice I refute the false binary and imposed heteronormativity that place queer existence against nature. 


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Santi Pérez García is a printmaker and installation artist whose work focuses on syncretic amalgams of plants and humans that celebrate gender variance present in the natural world. They received their MFA in Studio art from the University of Connecticut, a BFA in Studio Art from Rhode Island College and a BA in Biology from Brown University. Their practice has been sustained through residencies and grants including Oak Spring Garden Foundation, The Peter Bullough Foundation, The Rhode Island Foundation, Millay Arts, Wood/Raith Gender Identity Living Trust, Marks Family Endowment in the Arts and the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Printmaking. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Perez lives and works in Newport, Rhode Island.

"Mixed media relief sculpture. These are primarily upholstered fabric forms. This body of work was inspired by Darwin's exhaustive treatise on orchid sexuality and reproduction. Orchid reproduction is most often framed as "deceptive" which is a word frequently deployed against gender nonconforming bodies. This triptych configuration is meant to place the sculptures as devotional figures, a form of reverence toward nonconforming bodies and natural exuberance." - Andrea Pérez Bessin
Santi Pérez García. Santuarie: Cambia (Stigmatic Surface), 2022. Mixed media, dimension variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.