Las Nietas de Nonó
2025 Stepping Stone Grantee
The artist and siblings, mulowayi iyaye nonó and mapenzi chibale nonó form the duo Las Nietas de Nonó. Working across performance, installation, video, and biomaterial sculpture, their practice engages with Caribbean collective memories, interrogating issues such as dispossession, environmental and climate injustice, and the prison and medical-industrial complexes. In 2022, their solo exhibition Posibles Escenarios, Vol. 1 LNN was presented at Artists Space, New York, and curated by Danielle A. Jackson. The exhibition featured three immersive mixed-media installations that also functioned as performance stages, evoking neo-colonial exploitation and the silenced histories of Afro-Caribbean communities, and the development of microhistories in relation to geopolitics. They created Ilustraciones de la Mecánica in 2016 - a multimedia installation that was later commissioned by the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018) and the 79th Whitney Biennial (2019). Their work has been exhibited internationally, in cities such as Venice, Rome, Berlin, London, New York, Honolulu, and Canada, among others. It is also part of the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. In 2019, they co-founded Parceleras Afrocaribeñas, a community-based arts organization and cultural space in their hometown of San Antón, Puerto Rico.
