The exhibition, first presented in Los Angeles in 2022, delves into Kuriki-Olivo’s transnational background, with a particular emphasis on her Puerto Rican (Taino) ancestry. Through installations featuring earth, offerings, stones, and natural sounds, her work channels the spiritual and shamanistic traditions of her Taino island heritage. Everyday objects, intertwined with relics of her personal history, evoke her rich lived experiences while poetically honouring her own father, and those—from marginalized Indigenous, racialized, and trans communities, to which she belongs—who have historically endured and continue to face violence and oppression to this day.

Kuriki-Olivo considers daily life as an endurance act, especially for those whose survival is at stake, often blurring the boundaries between private and public realms in her practice. Her performance and installations incorporate consumer readymades and actions to explore their imbued emotional resonances and power relations. Noteworthy examples include inhabiting a replica of her actual bedroom in the lobby gallery of the New Museum in 2024, staging a grass-lined installation that served as a grave for her deadname in 2018, and crafting a pair of green synchronized clocks as an homage to Felix Gonzales-Torres in 2017. Kuriki-Olivo’s art underscores the universal human need for connection and care as fundamental to survival, even in a world marked by inequities and differences.