It’s a faded color snapshot, like so many, of a parent and child together at the beach. But this one has dark red threads woven from the father’s eyes to the child’s, the child’s hands to the father’s, and so on, like a beginner’s cat’s cradle. For anyone who has ever lost someone, it catches you, stops you cold. It is a tactile, material, visceral expression of the connection you crave when someone, or something, is gone.
Twenty-five-year-old Puerto Rican artist Gabriella N. Báez, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/she pronouns, believes in engaging directly with life’s pain, and often places herself in her art to ground, and humanize, big themes. From her earliest, more photojournalistic work to her recent portraits of queer “families” in Puerto Rico and a…
