In I trust the earth / Confío en la tierra, María Cecilia Ferrer (b. San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives and works in Detroit, MI) turns to the interwoven terrains of land and migration to reflect on the nature of home. Working through clay, drawing, and acts of listening, Ferrer attends to the quiet agency of materials, presenting a new body of work that imagines home not as a fixed location but as an ongoing, unruly process of relation.
The exhibition centers on the figure of a frog; more than a creature, it becomes a symbol, a guide, and an recurring echo of survival across centuries. It begins with a chance encounter: a plastic toy frog found in a Ferndale park. Recast and reconsidered, this discarded object transforms into the coquí, a small tree frog native to Puerto Rico and a layered emblem of cultural and sonic resistance. Revered in its homeland yet deemed “invasive” elsewhere, the coquí embodies the entangled histories of colonialism and ecological control. In Ferrer’s hands, it refuses containment, reminding us that belonging is continually negotiated across memories, landscapes, and the porous boundaries between species.
I trust the earth / Confío en la tierra emerges as both gesture and question. It asks what it means to belong: to a place, to a people, to the present moment, and to the pathways marked by the creatures that call from the trees.