Norma I. Quintana, Puerto Rican-American
Forage from Fire #21, 2017
This is an image taken from Quintana’s exhibition Facing Fire: Art, Wildfire, and the End of Nature in the New West. It shows a charred heart-shaped shell that was found in the wreckage of her home and studio days after the Atlas fire roared through her neighborhood. Quintana places a number of ordinary household items (such as pendants, ornaments, kitchen utensils, and frames) onto the plastic fire clean-up glove to convey the “persistence of memory” and personal resilience after such a devastating and destructive event. In her simple-yet-stunning photograph, Quintana is able to put trauma and loss into literal perspective, juxtaposing damaged remnants of her belongings with the restorative hand of human agency. Label by Tara Vasanth