Jill Cohen-Nuñez

poems (for the underground) is an installation of two sculptures that Cohen-Nuñez describes as altars—spaces for continual return, charged with shifting energies and intentions. Drawing from their familial lineage of curanderas (healers) from the Dominican Republic, and the Jewish practice of stacking stones to create altar spaces, these works invite reflection on memory, grief, and the role of ritual objects in processing loss. In response to the theme of “invasive species,” the artist explores generational loss of connection to culture and ancestral land due to immigration, survival, assimilation, and separation. Viewers are encouraged to engage directly with the altars by placing stones on them, continuing a cycle of interaction and adaptation through both human touch and natural forces.

The installation honors our connection to the underground as a space of transformation, nourishment, and remembrance of those who have passed. In placing these altars in a public space, the artist offers a tribute to the park as a site for mourning and celebration, bridging the material and immaterial worlds.

Jill Cohen-Nuñez is the 2024 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow

About the Artist

Jill Cohen-Nuñez (they/them) (b. 1992) is a Dominican-American artist from the Bronx, New York. Combining pre-Columbian Caribbean and jewish ancestries with personal mythology, Cohen-Nuñez investigates memory, the formation and evolution of rituals, folklore, and spiritual practices using wood, ceramics, stone, glass, and metal. through these arduous methods of creating, their work reflects on generational loss of connection to culture and land through immigration and assimilation. In 2023, they were awarded a New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill and have received grants and scholarships from the Connor Merit Awards, Urban Glass, the Oki Doki studio, and an NYFA city artist corps grant. Cohen-Nuñez has participated in residencies at Haverford college, the Newark Print Shop, Manhattan Graphics Center, MASS MoCA, Chashama, and Modern Art Foundry. They have exhibited work at the National Sculpture Society, Bronxartspace, Center for Performance Research, Fordham University, Baad! Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Jane Hartsook Gallery at the Greenwich House. They hold a BA in studio art from CUNY City College.

https://www.jillcohen-nunez.com/

Image credit: Ilana Jade Roth