BONY RAMIREZ

Caribaby

Bony Ramirez moved to the United States with his family from the Caribbean in 2009. At the age of thirteen, he and his younger brother were told they were going on a trip to Disney World. It turned out to be a significant change of scenery from their native town of Arroyo Seco in the Dominican Republic. 

Working in construction after finishing high school Ramirez worked six days a week, dedicating Sundays to the development of his art. Instead of pursuing a degree in art, he taught himself the techniques that would become distinctive in his work.

Ramirez’s use of magical realism calls on the memories of a land he loves, a place familiar but now physically distant. Somewhere he exists in the absence, with that distance continuously shaping his identity. The Caribbean is a constant in his creations and one of the most significant points of reference in Ramirez’s imagery. CARIBABY, fusing the words Caribbean + Baby, is often how he names his sculptural figures of children, accompanied by vivid, striking, and fantastical imagery. The survey of works presented here focuses specifically on this subcategory of his practice from 2021 and 2023.

In his first institutional exhibition, CARIBABY positions Ramirez as a “baby of the Caribbean” himself, serving as a tribute to all the people of the region. Many who left this archipelago in search of a perceived sense of progress (or the promise of better things to come) now represent an entrenched part of (and sometimes the majority) of numerous communities in this city, shaped by the customs and rituals they brought or inherited from their elders.

Ramirez invites us all to be active participants in his creations, welcoming us to step into his fantastical world and connect with our inner child. Despite the work being rooted in Caribbean aesthetics, the meanings are multiple, and the story isn’t unique to one specific group; the reality of immigration is universal.

This exhibition is co-organized by Danny Baez and Damien Davis.

About the Artist

Bony Ramirez’s rural upbringing in the Dominican Republic, his first encounters with Catholic imagery, and his deep interest in sources as varied as Italian mannerism, Renaissance portraiture, and children’s illustrations reverberate within and around the fictional characters he creates. If each figure appears to be transposed into a changing theater of symbolic surroundings and backdrops, it is the artist’s technique that renders this possible. Ramirez creates his heavily stylized, proportionally distorted figures on paper, and adheres them onto wood panels featuring idyllic, colorful backdrops of Caribbean imagery. As Ramirez’s characters, developed separately and simultaneously in oil stick, paint, and coloured pencil, make their way onto his works, so too do various other symbolic appendages. Ramirez uses a variety of objects which either complement the playfulness and idyllicism of his work, such as colorful beads, or contrast it by penetrating it with violence, such as real knives stabbed into the canvas.

Born in Tenares, Dominican Republic, 1996, lives and works in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Bony Ramirez has exhibited at Thierry Goldberg (New York), François Ghebaly (Los Angeles), and Deitch Projects (Los Angeles), and was recognized in The Artsy Vanguard 2021. His work has recently been acquired by the permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, as well as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Perez Art Museum Miami, and the X Museum in Beijing.