Untitled (What a Crypton)
Gabriella Torres-Ferrer
Untitled (What a Crypton)
Berlin, 2022
Plantains, live cryptocurrency displays
Untitled (What a Crypton) is a 2022 artwork by artist Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, that consists of a plantain branch and microcomputers displaying real time data on cryptocurrency and decentralized technologies. The use of plantain speaks of displacement and exploitation, as well as connection and persistence; they reached the Americas and the Caribbean along the movement of enslaved African lives during the 16th century colonization, but unlike bananas, which became a global trade commodity, plantains flourished in ‘provision grounds’ as a very resourceful subsistence source for enslaved Africans and indentured labourers. The living sculpture is part of their ongoing series, Mine Your Own Business that explores the digital environment as part of a continuum of capitalist-colonial entanglements. Instead of using found objects, as earlier versions, Untitled (What a Crypton) is made of fresh tropical fruit, and is decaying in real time along live data fluctuations that cross-examine global fintech dreams of deregulated empowerment and sovereignty.
Bio
Born 1987 in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Gabriella’s work considers the implications of existence within networked globalized life. They’re interested in the societal transformations of modern cybernetics; our digital reality and how this is redefining nature, vis a vis; understanding how old power structures are sustained, and acquire new forms. Their trans-media practice seeks to challenge hegemonic narratives, interfaces, modes of viewership and materialities, often pondering potential for transformation. Connecting internet culture, post-colonial psycho-social landscapes, ecologies, globalization. Questioning structures of power and means of production and exchange; what it means to be a body in this datafied world.
Torres-Ferrer has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museo del Barrio, the Shed, A.I.R. feminist collective, New York; The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale online and offline in São Paulo, Mexico City, San Juan and Santo Domingo; Phillip Martin, Los Angeles; Curro, Guadalajara; Gianni Manhattan, Vienna; Embajada, San Juan. Gabriella is a former resident of Beta Local’s La Práctica fellowship in San Juan. They are a 2020-2021 recipient of the Akademie Schloss Solitude Artist-in-Residence fellowship, Stuttgart, and received a guest artist, honorary mention at CERN Collide, Geneve.