Las Nietas de Nonó’s practice merges theater, interventions, and performances of everyday life. Formed by Lydela and Michel Nonó, Las Nietas de Nonó are based in Barrio San Antón, the same working-class neighborhood where their grandfather Nonó lived. His former home, now their living and working space, has become Patio Taller, a community space, an international artists’ residency, a hangout spot for the neighborhood’s kids, a workshop center, and a place for producing, cooking, and sharing food through informal gatherings.

Ilustraciones de la Mecánica (Illustrations of the Mechanical, 2016–18) brings the feeling and atmosphere of the barrio to Berlin. The work entails video, intermittent performances as well as objects, masks, and “skins” of female bodies—figures made of vegetable leather. This leather, a key element in the artists’ research, is the result of Lydela and Michel Nonó’s experiments with kombucha. The making of the material stands as a refer- ence to the interventions made to black women’s bodies through clinical experimentation carried out by the government, clinics, medical schools, and the pharmaceutical industry in Puerto Rico.

—Fabiana Lopes