Reliquia

“Reliquia” situates the artist within the landscape of Puerto Rico, reclining beneath a flamboyán tree in her aunt’s backyard - a recurring site in her work. Her body merges with the surrounding environment, dissolving the boundary between flesh and land and positioning the feminine as inseparable from nature. Referencing the tradition of the female nude in Western art history, including La Grande Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the work reframes the female body through autonomy, power, and presence rather than ornamentation. The title, meaning “relic” or “holy object,” evokes divinity and reverence, suggesting that true abundance resides within the same sacred force of the feminine and the natural world.