Jíbaro Basket

The Jíbaro Basket. Steam bent White Ash on a bent laminated and coopered Hickory base, stitched with copper wire and cane. "Jíbaro" is a word that is quintessential to the Puerto Rican identity. We now use it to describe someone who lives in the countryside or cultivates the land, but it comes from a Taíno word that translates to "lover of the forest." I love that because it means this term is both distinctly of our land of Borikén, as well as universally human in meaning.   We are currently experiencing and witnessing a lot of pain in our world, and by working within systems that engender this pain, we become enforcers, whether or not that is our volition. I did not consent to genocide in Palestine, to the erasure of people's stories in Congo and Sudan, to the criminalization of my trans+ siblings' existence, to the kidnapping and incarceration of Latinos (+) on Turtle Island. And so I find myself searching for reminders of what makes us human.   This is what I see in a basket—a tool