In Primary’s brightly painted space, Lucia Hierro presents objects and symbols from her upbringing in Washington Heights, New York, on a monumental scale. Titled “Vecinos/Neighbors,” the show is the Dominican-American artist’s first solo exhibition in Miami, where she hoped the gallery’s predominantly Haitian and Dominican neighborhood would recognize aspects of their own daily lives in the work.
Drawing on her previous “Mercado” and “Bodegon” series, Hierro’s new body of work is focused on Latinx experiences that have typically been excluded from galleries. With an oversized bag of Goya red kidney beans and Vicks VapoRub in Black Bag Up a Six Floor Walk-Up (2020), Hierro nods to Andy Warhol’s towering Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans. Nearby, a more-than three-foot-tall sculpture of a bag of Domino sugar, titled Can I Borrow a Cup of Sugar (2020), speaks to communal care—a theme that is prevalent throughout Hierro’s practice. “A family made this happen,” Hierro shared in a recent email exchange. “The title of the show really shaped the making of the works and mirrors how I work in general.” Now in the midst of a global pandemic, this sense of neighborly support and solidarity is especially critical, but it’s nothing new to Hierro, who now lives and works in the Bronx. “It’s important to understand that certain communities were already supporting each other through hard times,” she said.
— Harley Wong
