Tony Cruz Pabón’s childhood house was built of wood, zinc sheets, nails, linoleum and Formica. It was a prefabricated home with louvred Miami-style jalousie windows, a gabled roof and painted pale yellow with terracotta accents. When Tony was a child, a roost of bats moved in, settling between the zinc roof and the false ceiling. A few years later, a colony of bees also nested there, between the outer boards and the decorative interior panel, right beside the bunk bed that Tony shared with his brother. Within days, the buzzing was overwhelming. Wearing protective gear and working with great patience, the specialist hired to remove these new roommates cut the wax into pieces to store it — along with the bees — in special boxes used to relocate the hive to a new neighborhood.
Si por mí llueve is a series of sculptures and drawings on Formica that operate as material experiments installed in the yard and house where Tony grew up, in the Maricao sector of Vega Alta. The main work is a sound sculpture made of zinc and wood that creates a resonance tunnel to amplify the sound of rain. For Los límites de afuera, the artist collaborates with Maritza Sánchez, who activates the site through a practice of listening outward, creating an exchange between the structure and its sonic life. On one hand, this involves listening to outer space through satellites that attempt to capture and amplify signals, and on the other, attends to the immediate surroundings by echoing the childhood experiences that led Tony to conceive the sculpture.
Credits
Si por mí llueve (2024) [If the Rain Is My Doing]
Site-specific sculpture.
Tony Cruz Pabón
Artist 1977, Puerto Rico; based in Vega Alta
Tony Cruz Pabón works across drawing, animation, and photography. His work has been showcased at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (2021) and in exhibitions including Lo que pesa una cabeza: Escultura tras el 73 (TEA, Tenerife, 2022); Artefact: Parallel Crossings (STUK, Leuven, 2019); We Don’t Need Another Hero (10th Berlin Biennial, Germany, 2018); the Fotonoviembre International Photography Biennial (Tenerife, 2017); Spirit Levels (Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 2014); the III Poli/Gráfica Triennial of San Juan (2012); The Peripatetic School: Itinerant Drawing from Latin America (Drawing Room, London, 2011); and Galería Casas Riegner (Bogotá, 2011). His work has also been shown in São Paulo, Venezuela, New York, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Havana, and the Dominican Republic. Cruz is co-founder of Beta-Local (2009), an independent space and experimental pedagogical project dedicated to artistic production, dialogue, and critique in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
