About

Born in the United States but raised by grandparents from the island, I experienced varying perspectives of what it means to be Caribbean. I've been confronted by the gaze and linked histories of U.S. imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism since childhood. My work ties together the subject matter of my diasporic narrative and a communal one. I highlight concerns such as environmental destruction and isolation. I reference the Latin American genre of magical realism to subtly blend my fantasies with reality and to criticize the oppression of land and marginalized people. 

Through the medium of oil paint, I use saturated tropical colors, or palettes of red and orange to contrast my current home in California and my ancestral home in Puerto Rico. These two spaces sometimes exist on their own and are often in conversation with one another. In my paintings, I often depict a world that is burning, because the world is burning. The figures in my paintings try to cleanse that world, try to exist in it, or try to escape from it mentally. They are often yearning for or reflecting the sentiments of their environment: deserts, barren mountains, dreamlike dystopian landscapes. What does it mean to protect yourself and the environment you live in, that we all live in (human, flora, and fauna)? 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.

Simone Quiles is an artist residing in Los Angeles, CA. They have exhibited at Hashimoto Contemporary, TLALOC Studios, Art Share L.A., Woman Made Gallery Chicago, and the Gene Siskel Film Center.