Charo Oquet is a multidisciplinary Afro‑Caribbean artist born in the Dominican Republic during the final years of the Trujillo dictatorship. Her mother is of mixed African, Taíno and Jewish descent and her father’s lineage includes Lebanese, Spanish and French roots. Growing up she moved through villages and cities across the country, experiencing the synthesis of Hispaniola’s past and traditions.
The Orlando Museum of Art is presenting Oquet’s site‑specific installation I Am Here: Fragments, Trances, and Improvised Architectures (2026). The work features bound and spiraling forms, reconstructed canvases, spontaneous drawings and a central structure that functions as a backbone for additional sculptures. Drawings and abstract paintings extend outward like limbs, while collaged canvases suggest the contour of a brain. The installation invites viewers to move through the space toward a central sculpture described as an axis mundi, creating an atmosphere that references the music, garments, dance and language of Vodun Gagá processions and the Rara tradition brought by Haitian laborers. Materials such as weathered metal, hammered nails, fabric, gold and sequins draw on visual influences from Nkisi Nkondi and Paquet Kongo.
Oquet’s installation proposes an embrace of transformation and the building of social and spiritual energetic communal bonds, offering a sense of radical hope and joy amid times of instability.
Press release issued by Orlando Museum of Art:
https://omart.org/news/a-radical-gesture/
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