About

I have spent my life fantasizing about an island only at a distance and often through the gaze of stereotypes conceived and constructed under the direction of colonialism. Through art, specifically painting, I strive to unearth an authentic connection between myself and my ancestry. My work primarily explores themes of diaspora, magical realism, and the societal fetishization of my body as an Afro-Puerto Rican queer person.

I depict a world that is burning because the world is burning. The figures in my oil paintings try to exist in that world by cleansing it or protecting themselves. These figures use tools such as salt circles, oversized rubber cleaning gloves, and the comfort of a lover or animals as they search for acts of personal and environmental salvation. They often empathize or grieve their environment: barren mountains, flaming forest, and other dreamlike dystopian landscapes. I either use shades of red and burnt sienna to reflect my current home of Los Angeles, which has been extremely vulnerable to devastating forest fires or lavish tropical colors of my ancestral home in the Caribbean.

As a second-generation member of the Puerto Rican diaspora, I use magical realism to explore a place I only hold in familial memory. Magical realism defies conventional norms of Western forms and is suited to exploring and transgressing Western artistic or political ideologies. I use the ideas of this genre to gain autonomy over a history that has previously not allowed marginalized artists to guide and reveal their own experiences.

Simone Quiles is an artist residing in Los Angeles, CA. They have exhibited at Hashimoto Contemporary (Los Angeles), TLALOC Studios (Los Angeles), Art Share L.A., Woman Made Gallery Chicago, and the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago). Recently, they’ve gained interest in curation. In 2024 they solo curated and produced a 10 person exhibiton Like Sand for Sleepy Eyes.