Cielo Felix-Hernandez, "It Could be Sweet," 2021

Cielo Felix-Hernandez, It Could be Sweet, 2021, oil on paper, hibiscus dye, 12 x 16 inches. Framed.

Cielo Felix-Hernandez (b. 1998, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico) is a Brooklyn-based painter and interdisciplinary artist. She received her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Working primarily in oil paint, Felix-Hernandez draws on memory and aesthetics derived from cultural legacy to reflect her lived experience as a trans- femme Boricua. Her exuberant palette and detailed, referential compositions draw viewers in to a space of care, resilience, and joy. The roots of Felix-Hernandez’s paintings are autobiographical, referencing an upbringing caught between the island of Puerto Rico and the mainland of the United States. They contain traces of the past which express the artist’s diasporic roots, as well as those of her mother and grandmother. For Felix-Hernandez, she represents an expansive transfemme future that exists beyond the confining narratives of coloniality and marginalization.