At the heart of Daniel Lind-Ramos’s practice are large-scale assemblages of found objects, often objects gifted to him by friends and neighbours, or those he comes across after a hurricane, when they are thrown, helter-skelter, into environments where they do not necessarily belong.
The sculptures Lind-Ramos presents at the Biennale Arte 2026 conjure the history of maroonage and escape. Talegas de la memoria (2023-2024) takes as its point of departure the plastic kayak, an object that, for Lind-Ramos, symbolises the ongoing stakes of water-bound travel for black life, past and present, in Puerto Rico. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a large number of people escaping slavery fled by boat there, taking refuge in the area’s dense mangroves. Meanwhile, the found objects in Guardaverde (2024-2025) and Centinelas de la luna nueva (2023) combine to 126 create sentinel-like entities, paying homage to those stewards who have watched over the land.
Together, the three works narrate commingling historical threads: of the land protecting people from the regime of the plantation, and of people protecting the land from the ecological terror that is inseparable from that very same regime. In Lind-Ramos’s figures, we see the twinned needs for preservation of the environment and preservation of black life in assemblages that speak life over and against death.
—Zoë Hopkins
With the additional support of The Ranch Gallery, New York
