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Gabriel Sosa in his studio, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Victoria RoytenbergGabriel Sosa (B. 1985, Miami, FL) is an artist, curator, and educator based in Salem, MA. Sosa earned an MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts and a BA in Philosophy from Boston University. From 2009 to–2021, Sosa served as an English and Spanish-speaking interpreter in the Massachusetts Trial Court. In fall 2022, Sosa’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA. His work has also been shown in galleries and public venues around Boston, Miami, and Cali, Colombia.
I visited Gabriel in his Salem studio while he was well-underway on preparations for his first museum exhibition. During the visit, he was clear on his vision for the show and moved to present drawings that were in direct response to timely events. A few months following, walking through the Fitchburg gallery, it was striking to see how Gabriel’s vision had come to life exactly as he’d imagined, and how works on paper commanded the room. I’m thrilled to share Gabriel’s insights into the show, and highlight some of the works on paper that were on view.
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Gabriel Sosa, For the First 185 Years, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Julia Featheringill
RSK
“No Vehicles in the Park” was the title of your exhibition in Fitchburg. Can you describe the origins of this phrase and why you chose it?
GS
The work featured in the exhibition centers on interpretation. Not so much from one language to another, but rather how we extract meaning from words and phrases, particularly in legal contexts. “No Vehicles in the Park” comes from a law school exercise where students are asked to scrutinize the rule and apply it in the face of various conundrums, e.g. would a wheelchair count as a vehicle? Would an ambulance be allowed in the park? Or, at what height would a drone be considered to be “in” the park? I first encountered the phrase in 2021, when I participated in The Art & Law Program, a seminar-colloquium that explores the impact of art and law on one another. On the first day, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, the program’s founding director, asked us to interpret that phrase. A lengthy debate followed and the exercise stuck with me. My own interpretations of the phrase are still evolving.
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Gabriel Sosa, Some Limitations, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Julia Featheringill
RSK
The specific legal proceedings and court rulings that inspired this body of work–how important is it to you that your viewer is informed about these source materials?
GS
Legal language often reads as abstruse and unintelligible, often despite best intentions to the contrary. I’m interested in the capacity for language to complicate and obscure different issues. In preparation for these drawings, I read multiple U.S. Supreme Court opinions, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Ramos v. Louisiana, Vega v. Tekoh, and New York State Rifle and Pistol Assn., Inc. So many visitors to the exhibition were surprised to learn that all of these opinions are available for free as downloadable PDFs on public websites. So much of our lives in the United States is shaped not by the legislature but by the judiciary, and I’m interested in expanding an awareness of that. I want to advocate for a sense of judicial literacy, for acritical understanding of where our laws are coming from and how to respond to them.
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Gabriel Sosa, We Hold, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.
RSK
Is there anything notable or new for you in the drawings in terms of the ways in which text, color, abstraction, and figuration all combine?
GS
For years, I worked almost exclusively in black and white. More recently, my work has become much more colorful, brimming with soft and soothing pastels. In part, that shift was prompted by the onset of the pandemic. In color, I find comfort. For "No Vehicles in the Park", I became especially interested in the contrast between the soothing nature of the color palette and the disconcerting material in the subject matter. This played out both in the colors in the work as well as in the color scheme I devised for the gallery. There was an oscillation between the quiet and the chaotic, the cheerful and the discomforting. The pastel shades on the wall pointed to a discussion around Baker-Miller pink. In the 1970s, research showed that a particular shade of pink had calming effects and reduced the number of violent incidents in jails. But it was only based on one study, and subsequent ones demonstrated the opposite. I aimed for this to open up different possibilities of interpretation, not unlike the exhibition’s title.
RSK
On a more macro level, why work on paper and exhibit work on paper? What is it about drawing that you connect to in this moment?
GS
I explore these issues through drawing because of the timeless nature of it. Humans have been communicating by making marks on surfaces for thousands of years, and we continue to do so. So many of those marks are on paper, often fragile but resilient enough to hold multiple layers atop one another. I’m interested in the palimpsestic nature of drawing, where despite heavy erasure, some residue of the past remains visible. Like in language and the law, the past shines through.
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Gabriel Sosa, Twelve out of twelve, 2022. Images courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Charles Sternaimolo
RSK
We’ve discussed how your artistic practice may look different from other artists working in the studio day-to-day, and how you think about what constitutes yourwork. Can you reflect more on this, in relation to these drawings, and also perhaps to what you have in progress now?GS
My lived experience continuously informs my art practice, both in terms of my personal history as well as my day-to-day rhythms. My studio time takes many forms: reading texts that I’m interested in, taking mental notes on how colors in my environment affect my perception of a space, and reflecting on over a decade spent working in court rooms all form part of the work. Making is only a fraction of the process. I’ve recently been photographing bodegas and thinking about their roles in different communities, as spaces for support, connection, and neighborhood gossip. I’m interested in colorful store fronts, in delightfully tacky lights and lettering, and how they always remind me of La Campana on 67th Avenue in Miami, where I would walk to with my grandfather as akid. Stay tuned.
