Biography

Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez is a multidisciplinary maker and educator working in collaboration with their family. With the use of multimedia installation and live plants, their work examines intimacy, family narratives, Cuir (Queer) Ecology, and how we carry the land’s inherited colonial structures through personal imaginaries and the dualities of the everyday. Their work is rooted in the lands of their hometown Añasco Puerto Rico known as “La cuna de la Puertorriqueñidad” (the birth of puertoricanness) and the town “Donde murieron los Dioses” (where the gods died). They have been awarded numerous residencies, including the University of the Arts iLAB Residency, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts, and Feminist Art Collective Artscape. Their work has been screened or exhibited internationally including at Taller Comunidad La Goyco (San Juan), Temple Contemporary (Philadelphia), Video Caribx at Documenta Fifteen (Kassel), and Hessel Museum of Art (New York).

Isla Flotante/Floating Island and Tierra Prensada (2022-en cours)

Working through the lens of speculative fiction, Isla Flotante / Floating Island (2022-ongoing), the artist invites their family to imagine and visualize what it would mean to live on a floating island. The metaphor speaks to the ways in which Puerto Rico is constantly navigating shifting political, social and economic terrains amidst both historical and ongoing colonialism. The video depicts the everyday conditions of structural abandonment and intensified gentrification while also portraying the love and humour of a multi-generational household deeply connected to the more-than-human world around them. While the speculative island may float, its peoples are deeply connected to this land and all its beings.

Collaborations: Voice narrations by Eva Angeli Sanchez Mendez and Abuela Luisa. Collaborative scenes with Jaycob Figueroa and Shaleyka Figueroa.