Bony Ramirez
Veronica

Bony Ramirez (b. 1996, Tenares, Salcedo, Dominican Republic) is a New Jersey based mixed media artist whose work draws inspiration from Caribbean iconography and Renaissance style. In bold, colorful portraits of contorted, often nude figures, drawn on paper and then adhered to painted wooden backdrops that evoke the Caribbean tropics, Ramirez’s work meditates on the legacy of colonialism in his native Dominican Republic. He cites Renaissance tropes like romanticized gore as influence, references recontextualized by afro-caribbean elements (a plantain tree, a durag) and reclaimed by the Black and Brown figures who inhabit them. The layers of the material evoke the vestiges of Euro-colonialism that continue to inhabit the Caribbean psyche — a “double consciousness” that is occasionally, violently, interrupted, as in his work Peel? Los Plátanos No Se Pelan Solos, in which metal swords literally protrude from the canvas. Ramirez’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal (2021) and Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York (2020),  as well as recent group exhibitions at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2021), Company Gallery, New York (2021), Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (2020), Regular Normal, New York (2020), Zürcher Gallery, New York  (2020) and Anna Zorina Gallery, New York (2020).