Artist Statement / About:

I pursue the radical body. In this pursuit, I observe the geological body, the queer body, the discarded, the non-human, the hybrid, the joyous, the augmented, the limitless, the inviolable body. A radical body is indicative of one that has capacity, limitless potential in appearance and performance. And yet, its boundlessness is disempowered. Its constriction and violation is supervised by the western, heteronormative gaze that performs othering. Countless modes of being are ushered to erasure. I seek release, infinity. The infinity of somatic form is catalyzed by the appearance of apparatuses and agents of transformation. A parallel is observed here between the corporeal subject and earth materials. Clay in particular, as a corporeal substitute, implicates its chemistry and history as pliable and resistant. Fragile or inviolable and connected to the spirit as are the various things called bodies. Here, I become fixated on the state of the body away from its constraints of western desires. In turning towards the non western articulation and performance of bodies, I consider the changing body. Altogether supported, destroyed, reincarnated, shifting, in communion, abject, and impossible. Waste, glass, earth, data, fiber, and water formed into and/or augmenting the body in pursuit of itself.   

Miguel Enrique Lastra (He/Him) is a queer, Puerto Rican sculptor and ceramist. His work uses a mixture of materials to include ceramics, fibers, audio, and ice to expand the array, orientations, and augmentations of celebrated and ceremonious bodies depicted in space. He is especially interested in the possibility, multiplicity, and infinity of the body and its preoccupations. Miguel received his MFA in Ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2022,  his BFA in Studio Art at the University of New Mexico in 2018, and was a 2024 participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Miguel has been the recipient of a Windgate Scholarship, a RISD x Hyundai Motor Group Research Fellowship, the Butler Family Graduate Fellowship and is a 2024 AICAD Teaching Fellow.