Nicole Soto Rodríguez’s “Errores de luz” [Errors of Light] opened on Thursday, August 3, 2023, at 7:00pm, at El Kilómetro (802 Roberto H. Todd Avenue, San Juan, Puerto Rico). Here is a description of Soto’s work by art historian and independent curator Melissa M. Ramos Borges.

The electrification of public spaces signaled technological progress and brought, in turn, a radical transformation of modern life. It is no coincidence, then, that the artists of modernity will explore this source of light as the subject of their creations, as evidenced by the painting Lampada ad arco (1909-1911) by Giacomo Balla. In it, the Italian artist captures the luminescence of an electric streetlamp whose brilliance eclipses the crescent moon in the background of the canvas, a clear metaphor in which electricity represents the industrial future while the moon represents the past. Although Balla’s image is an ode to the dazzling future that electricity promises, the series Errores de luz, by movement and video artist Nicole Soto Rodríguez, is an invitation to reflect on the dark present in which Puerto Ricans survive in the archipelago.

Since 2016, during her city walks, Soto Rodríguez has used her iPhone to document unexpected encounters with electro-luminous anomalies in lamps installed in public spaces. From the extensive accumulated video archive, she selected the 10 videos that are exhibited in El Kilómetro. She places them in an unlit space, with the monitors distributed at unequal heights throughout the gallery. One by one, shots of different electric light sources appear on the screens, in a way, imitating the same flashing of the images they present. Captured through the lens, the artist presents us with lightpoles in parking lots, circular fluorescent tubes, spotlights in public squares, outdoor security lights, among others, that quiver, and turn on and off at different rhythms and speeds. The deficiency of light bulbs in public spaces—or of the electrical system that supplies them—is a common affliction of the Puerto Rican experience. With Errores de luz, Soto Rodríguez uses a common and mundane event that goes unnoticed by most to illuminate another broader issue, giving it a dazzling symbolism: the abandonment caused by the failure of the modern State.

[Translated by Ivette Romero.]