NEW YORK, NY.- El Museo del Barrio is presenting Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla (I Am an Island) the first museum retrospective of the prolific, innovative, and yet largely under-recognized artist Zilia Sánchez (b. 1926, Havana – lives and works in San Juan). Featuring over 40 works and spanning seven decades of Sánchez’s career from the 1950s to the present, the show includes paintings, works on paper, shaped canvases, sculptural pieces, graphic illustrations, and ephemera, and is accompanied by a major publication and newly commissioned artist’s documentary. Organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, and curated by Dr. Vesela Sretenović, Phillips Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Soy Isla was previously exhibited at The Phillips Collection and at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, prior to its New York iteration.

The exhibition title, Soy Isla, serves as a personal metaphor for Sánchez's experience as an islander—connected to and disconnected from mainstream art. The retrospective traces from her early days in Cuba and extended travels in Europe in the 1950s, to her residence in New York in the 1960s, and finally her move to Puerto Rico, where she has lived and worked as an artist and teacher since the early 1970s. Throughout her prolific career Sánchez has pursued a distinctive approach to abstraction characterized by shaped canvases that hover between painting and sculpture.

“We are delighted to present Soy Isla at El Museo del Barrio in New York, a city where the artist resided for almost ten years before settling in Puerto Rico. Though a beloved figure among artists on the island and in the diaspora, her unique practice continues to remain unknown to wider audiences. On view as part of our Women’s Retrospective series, Soy Isla reflects El Museo’s commitment to showcasing the work of important women artists who are under-recognized. Still creating art at age 93, Sánchez is most deserving of this retrospective celebration.” said Patrick Charpenel, Executive Director, El Museo del Barrio.

Often referred to as Topologies, many of Sánchez’s shaped canvases invite comparisons with the body and landscape through their curvilinear geometry. Though never overt, her practice is inherently political, her sensual and sometimes erotic forms reflecting a particular and personal mode of resistance. Thus, many of Sánchez’s works reference female warriors from ancient mythology, such as Trojans, Amazons, Furies, as well as heroines like Antigone. Others have reoccurring motifs of lunar shapes and tattoo drawings that map physical and psychological spaces and add another dimension to her curvilinear geometry, rich with metaphorical meaning.

According to Dr. Sretenović, “Soy Isla refers to an island—either Cuba, where Zilia was born, grew up, and began her artistic career, or Puerto Rico, where she has long resided and worked, or both—surrounded by the vastness of the sea and the boundless horizon, yet never in complete isolation. It also refers to her own desire for solitary practice, forming an 'island' of her own within major art currents.”