Diáspora and the Exotic Other, 2021

Kengel Maysonet Baerga is a sculptor and a digital artist. Their work focuses on representation, play, and familiar language. As a queer, dark-skinned Puerto Rican living in the continental US, they delve into the complications of their intersectional identities and disrupt normative institutions by perverting play. Baerga queers family board games and injects playfulness into the gallery. In combining adult sexual themes with juvenile pleasure, they uncover their audience’s suppressed desire to play.