[ Music plays ] Ramirez: This is the one piece in the show that I wanted to feel a little bit more like contemporary or like in the current times.

Muñoz-Rodriguez: Bony Ramirez is a local artist who was born in the Dominican Republic, and he immigrated to New Jersey in 2009 when he was 13.

Narrator: After high school, Bony wanted to study art, but college was too expensive, so for seven years he worked full time in construction while pursuing his art on the side.

Muñoz-Rodriguez: For me, I see it as marking him in a positive way.

He's really proudly self-taught.

And in 2020, during the pandemic, he really decided to kind of take this leap of faith and become an artist full time.

And since then, he's really just had this meteoric rise.

Narrator: It's been an act of self-invention, right down to his name.

Bony was what he called his much-loved stuffed bunny in English when he first arrived in the U.S. Ramirez: In Spanish, we write things how we pronounce them, and it was "bonny" as B-O-N-Y.

And I think once I became like a "professional artist," I was trying to look for a name that was a little bit more unique.

And that's where I was like, oh, Bony.

It sounds pretty unique.

When I became an artist full time, I basically felt like I was living for the first time.

That was also like that sign of like, this is the new person that I am today, which is the person that I always wanted to be.

Narrator: Bony Ramirez's solo exhibition at the Newark Museum of Art is part of their ongoing Global Contemporary series, where artists are invited to explore and respond to the museum's collections.

Muñoz-Rodriguez: So it's an opportunity for an artist to kind of sort of be an artist in residence at the museum for a year.

They get full access to our collections and storage, and they work with a curator to develop and respond to our collection with a new body of work.

Narrator: Bony started his residency by returning to a painting he remembered from the first time he came to the Newark Museum of Art about 10 years ago, when he was still a teenager.

Ramirez: I don't know if it's like, you know, the 18-year-old me, but it was, you know, just seeing, like, this very tropical landscape, really felt like home.

That's why I really connected with that painting and basically was the cornerstone/starting point of the whole exhibition.

[ Music plays ] Narrator: The show has a sense of magical realism about it.

There's an undercurrent of unease or even violence that's part of the beauty.

Muñoz-Rodriguez: He's really kind of been leaning more into the difficult histories of the Caribbean, as well as the difficult realities of the Caribbean present.

Narrator: Such as the tourist trade.

In "Caribe Express/Caribe Tours," Dominican workers deliver fresh towels and serve drinks to guests at the swim-up bar.

Ramirez: When I want to specify more like Dominican culture itself, I use these carnival masks that we have in Dominican Republic.

Throughout the Caribbean, they're also very common, but these are very specific to the island as well.

Narrator: In this almost 27-foot painting, Bony centers the experience of the local islanders.

Their masks have a double meaning, as during COVID, tourist spots in the Dominican Republic stayed open for business despite the danger to workers.

Ramirez: Lives were actually lost for not having those restrictions too.

Muñoz-Rodriguez: The horse skull on that third panel is just this idea, you know, a horse is a labor animal.

So this idea of kind of working yourself to death for someone else's version of paradise.

Narrator: The resort guests are cutouts created with wallpaper and collaged onto the painting.

Ramirez: I think I wanted to show the otherness.

I focus on very European wallpapers.

I source them from like different -- like eBay or different, like, antique stores.

Like, I want them to feel and look like from a certain period of time.

I think I've always loved that juxtaposition between, you know, like, black and brown figures with these, like, European wallpapers, usually whether they are on curtains or in dresses, but they always start to make that conversation.

You know, to kind of like switch up the narrative a little bit, I was like, how -- how does colonizing the colonizer feel like?

Muñoz-Rodriguez: Although he's self-taught, his practice is really steeped in art history.

He's really influenced by mannerist painting and surrealism and kind of the tradition of magical realism in Latin America.

And so the painting of three little girls, he sees them as sisters.

They're sitting on a bed, and two of the girls are sprouting foliage for arms, and they are kind of gently turning the third girl.

[ Laughs ] So they're touching her hand, and he's incorporated some bits of kind of like confetti to almost, you know, simulate this moment of transition.

Ramirez: When I started using taxidermy in my work it was mainly as a way of, you know, how do I open myself up a little bit more about myself?

For this particular work, I wanted to talk about more like my experiences, for example, working construction or just having, you know, the urge to be like an artist or somebody else that couldn't escape, like, the conditions of life.

[ Music plays ] Muñoz-Rodriguez: He's doing something really interesting by drawing in the viewer with these -- these kind of vibrant colors or these really beautiful elements.

But then, you know, encouraging them to sit a little bit longer with the work and say, okay, wait, what's actually happening here?

Or what am I supposed to be taking away from this?

And I think he's also trying to show a more -- a more nuanced view of Caribbean life and Caribbean culture.

I think there's this really one-dimensional view of the Caribbean as this really beautiful tropical paradise.

And he's like, yeah, but there's also this.

Ramirez: If I am going to tackle hard topics, like colonization and different things that I really wanted to show the true colors of it without, you know, putting too much makeup on it, if that makes sense.

I like the viewer to really feel the exhibition beyond just a good feeling.

It's almost like challenging the viewer with a lot of the works themselves.

[ Music plays ]