Bony Ramirez's solo exhibition Cattleya is on view at the Newark Museum of Art, marking the artist's first solo exhibition at an art museum.
Over the course of a year, Ramirez explored the Museum’s collections broadly, with a focus on historic portraiture, landscape, and contemporary art. Childhood memories of the Dominican Republic and the complicated histories of the Caribbean inform his surreal narrative style. Cattleya is a genus of orchid native to Central and South America that Ramirez associates with colonialism. The exhibition probes the legacy of colonialism and the effects of the tourism industry in the Caribbean, while also reimagining what resistance can look like.