Sueños de Iguana is a multimedia installation that reflects where my family’s shared Iguana dreams go to converse and create form. It is a place where I go to speak with my mother on the things that go unsaid about my transition, in a language I am creating through texture and color. A wall is covered in abstractions of Puerto Rican flora/fauna, paintings that depict the color palette of my re-imaged island, and audio reactive textures projected onto shapes within the installation.
https://www.sparkbaltimore.org/map-gallery/#/foster-reynolds-santiago-1/
Sueños de Iguana, Acrylic, Collage, single-channel video projection 20 minutes, 2021
Flamboyán for Breakfast is an installation that represents the story of my Tia Aileen and I eating petals from the Puerto Rican Flamboyán tree, and the subsequent dreams we’ve had about our bodies alongside these types of trees. Viewers approach a wooden table and chairs, colorfully painted with abstractions of the Flamboyán’s petals as intuitive marks in conté crayon and acrylic paint. The Flamboyán’s long seed pods, replicated in woodcuts, are scattered on the table along with inscriptions of shapes reminiscent of my post-transition body. These same scar-pod shapes appear on murals that depict the image of my chest and are positioned on the walls behind the table and chairs. As viewers walk around the space, they hear ambient coqui frog audio. Hanging next to the breakfast scene is a chandelier made of long yarn ropes, each knitted to mimic the dense seaweed that Aileen and I often swam through during our oceanside stops.
Link to video documentation (Note: Please view all videos in 1080p)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEcgBc9PLpkkodoCc3ReWUP3gdDwvOXJ/view?usp=sharing:
Flamboyán for Breakfast, 2022
Wool yarn, table, chairs, plywood seed pods, acrylic paint, canvas, 20-Minute audio loop of coqui frogs
Foster Reynolds-Santiago: Transgender Euphoria Puerto Rico’s Queer Exaltation at Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, Baltimore, MD 2022
Seaweed Portals, 2022
Foster Reynolds-Santiago: Transgender Euphoria : Puerto Rico’s Queer Exaltation at Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, Baltimore, MD 2022
Seaweed Portals is a multi-channel video work in Transgender Euphoria: Puerto Rico’s Queer Exaltation, a two-part installation that depicts the spiritual connection between the island of Puerto Rico and its Transgender inhabitants through the visualization of a multi-generational queer narrative. By abstracting Caribbean seascapes, parts of the Flamboyán tree, chest scars left behind by gender-affirming surgery and coquí frogs through an array of mediums, the ecology of Puerto Rico and the Trans body overlap and create a multi-sensory place wherein visitors may witness the euphoria of Transgender Puerto Ricans.
Wool yarn, plywood, acrylic paint, canvas, 1 hour audio loop, multi-channel video projection 33 minutes: 35 seconds
Wool yarn, plywood, acrylic paint, canvas, 1 hour audio loop, multi-channel video projection 33 minutes: 35 seconds
A Different Horizon Atlas is a series of drawings that depict collectively imagined 2SLGBTQAI+ utopias. This edition was produced by Jaimes Mayhew and features 5 maps with over 15 collaborators, including maps drawn by Jaimes Mayhew, Foster Reynolds-Santiago and Jess McPherson.
This project is generously supported by a 2021 Rubys Artist Grant, which is a program of the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation. https://www.rwdfoundation.org
Group Exhibition, Social Contracts, Current Space, Baltimore, MD, 2024
We'll make our homes from the seedpods that fall to the ground. We'll split them lengthwise and create roads from each half.
Her Tree
I ate a big red flower before going to la Parguera
I’ll keep making this great big idea out of bits and smaller parts, until I’ve sunk to the bottom of something good.
I’m terrified by the next wave, but maybe a little bit in love with it too.
And with a great big leap, I’ll swim back up to the shore along with whatever I’ve found.
Drying Clothes in Naranjito
We swan at Cascada Gozalandia. I could hear others jumping from the rocks as you waded through the water to find a spot for me to sit.
Peak Frequency Swimming
Seed Pod Rubbings, 2022
Ten 14 x 18-inch drawings, charcoal on paper
There is a stark similarity between the grooves on the seed pods that fall from the Flamboyán trees in Puerto Rico, and the ridges of the scars left on trans-masculine chests post gender-affirming surgery. Seed pods were gathered across the island by Foster Reynolds-Santiago and his LGBTQ family in the summer of 2021, and then turned into a series of charcoal rubbings. Transgender Euphoria: Puerto Rico’s Queer Exaltation features these drawings encapsulated in a larger acrylic mural reminiscent of the seed pod’s shape.
Foster Reynolds-Santiago: Transgender Euphoria: Puerto Rico’s Queer Exaltation at Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, Baltimore, MD 2022
