We sat down with Coral to talk about her experience as a Fellow at the International Residency:

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work?

I am from Mexico City and I moved to NYC a couple of years ago. My work is influenced by personal and poetic visual experiences that make up the everyday. I am interested in recontextualizing overlooked objects and processes, and framing them as poetic moments through collecting, disposing, constructing, translating, and recreating them. My sculptures frame situations where systems collapse, question the functionality of objects, explore material relationships, and investigate our relationship to labor. I am interested in creating a new world where we can see the maker’s hand like a poetic mark and I believe we have to find new ways of representing and describing our world, while simultaneously making and describing things that don’t yet exist..

Your work is often influenced by personal and poetic visual experiences that make up the everyday. Was there a poetic moment you captured during your time here that inspired you?

The Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) had a huge presence in my practice while being at Nars. Nars is located on 46th street and 2nd ave. The BQE runs 11.7 miles (19 km) from the Grand Central Parkway in Queens to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel passing through 3rd ave., only one block away from the Nars Foundation building.

Through this constant passing under the BQE, thoughts around the public space started to take a different form in my work. Concrete, steel, dust, lights, noise, plastics, pigeons, poop, spit, textures, signals, trash,

forms. This section of the public space became an endless pit of poetic compositions. Apart from being a crucial piece of infrastructure for New York City, it became a study piece for myself watching the pigeons conglomerate under it, cars parked for days due to the lack of parking regulations, pedestrians always looking up so as to not get crushed with a rusty piece of steel since the highway has deteriorated over time (and why it is constantly under repair).

What was an experience or moment at NARS that stood out to you?

Meeting Kalya O’Donoghue was a highlight. She had a studio next door to mine. She was not part of the residency but part of the other artist studios in the building. She knows so much about glazes and ceramics. I got to learn a lot from her. She got me inspired to buy a kiln for my studio practice.

What advice would you give to the future residency Fellows?

Have fun. Enjoy your time in NY and if you are already based in NY reach out so we can be friends.

Learn more about the Artist

In what ways do you feel that the residency and in particular, the fellowship, impacted or changed your studio practice?

It was a great space to start putting my thoughts and notes around the BQE together through sketches, drawings, and small material experiments. I was invited to be part of a show upstate at the Lighthouse Works Gallery and I spent my first month at the residency working on a sculpture for the show. The piece I made was titled “Under the BQE” and it existed like a collage of my observations while commuting to Nars.

The second half of the residency I spent a lot of time making drawings of the plastic barricades that are all over the city. Like the BQE, these barricades are overlooked objects that take over the city forming invisible lanes that we abide by.

The fellowship gave me mostly time and space to help these ideas take form.

What was a typical day in the studio like for you at NARS?

My fellow residents were a gift and a highlight of my time at the residency. Being surrounded by people who are constantly trying to find ways to rethink and redefine the world is amazing. Emily DiCarlo was doing some research on pigeons and strapping cameras to them to have aerial views of NYC, Matilde Søes Rasmussen was constantly fotoshooting people in her studio and thinking about her life as a model back in Denmark, I liked seeing the camera flashes on the ceiling of the building since the walls of the studios don’t go all the way up. Robin Alysha Clemens was making a film about an orthodox jewish man who had a secret love for raves and electronic music, Jie Shao was doing material experimentations and sculptures with found and built objects, Cristóbal Gracia was thinking about leeches and parasites and we had endless conversations about being a “Mexican artist” in the United States. Chengtao Yi was making sculptures with lenticular panels and artificial plants, Lauren Walkiewicz was airbrushing some amazing post apocalyptic characters onto plastic and wooden shaped forms, Sato Sugamoto was weaving and threading and building non stop these abstract sculptures. Umico was working with crickets and shoes and making beautiful ephemeral sculptures, she had these plums in vinegar that we would eat at night, I still think about them. Laura was working with cyanotypes constantly fighting with the unpredictable weather in NY, Zindzi Zwietering was transferring images into wood and paper making new images and thinking about the climate crisis, Jeffrey Poirier was thinking on his next proposal for a public sculpture and we had good conversations questioning the desire to be an artist in NYC.

I am just saying a few sentences about this amazing group of people but everyone should look them up and see what they are doing.

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