This project explores the porous relationships between colonial histories, religious inheritances in cultural diaspora, and personal ritual. Sánchez Noa ladens his sculptures and handmade paper works with culturally significant materials such as cascarilla, indigo, and tobacco. The latter, a material that holds significant power in Afro-Cuban prayer and spiritual traditions, is also a reference to the artist’s mother who worked in a cigar factory in Cuba. By incorporating Cuban tobacco leaf in handmade paper using both printmaking principles and sculptural elements, he interrogates how histories of colonial extraction have impacted notions of race, identity, and the land. These works intertwine traditional modes of fabrication, natural materials, and rituals with pressing ecological and social challenges. This project creates connections between nature, the body, and Sánchez Noa’s spiritual practice to reconstruct narratives of displacement in relation to cultural resilience.

Jonathan Sanchez Noa is a multidisciplinary artist working with drawing, installation, and sculpture. He creates artworks that examine how histories of colonial extractivism have impacted notions of race, identity, and climate. He utilizes Cuban tobacco as a medium to reconstruct narratives of displacement in relation to cultural and religious significance. He earned his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2020 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2023. Recent exhibitions of his work include the Sixth AIM Biennial at The Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY (2024); New Voices at Print Center New York, New York, NY (2024); Mental Spaces II at Sugar Hill Museum, New York, NY (2024); Once at Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Chicago, IL (2023); Rastros en el tiempo at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, New York, NY (2022); and Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021).