Bajo el Sol Gallery is pleased to present Shifting Roots, Fluid Horizons, a group exhibition featuring internationally exhibited artists Sigi Torinus, José Seone, and Janet Cook-Rutnik. The exhibition explores how place and memory shape ways of seeing and being.
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
“In Shifting Roots, Fluid Horizons, the work of Janet Cook-Rutnik, Sigi Torinus, and José Seoane converges as a dynamic dialogue between three creative and established practices that continue to evolve. Each artist persistently challenges their own boundaries—at times in quiet isolation, and at others through shared creative exchange. Together, their works reflect on fragile environments, lives in flux, where identity and place are continuously reshaped through processes of migration and transculturation. This exhibition is both a meditation and a conversation”— curator, Priscilla Hintz Rivera
Each artist brings a distinct, yet interconnected perspective rooted in experience and ecological awareness. Together their works reinforce a sense of identity grounded in place while remaining fluid, evolving, and responsive to change.
Sigi Torinus presents new media installations and immersive visual language in a body of work that occupies the space between the underwater and sky, holding moments of sinking and surfacing, nearness and distance, and quiet suspension.
Born and raised in the Virgin Islands, Torinus studied Art and Philosophy, earning her MFA from the Braunschweig Art Institute in Germany and San Francisco State University. Her work reflects migration and movement, using light and sound in poetic, playful ways.
José Seoane, a Cuban–Canadian artist living part-time on St. John, explores transculturation and diasporic identity through hybrid works that merge painting, sculpture, and time-based media. In this exhibition, he repurposes bird cages with organic materials alongside watercolor abstractions, creating layered compositions that evoke memory, displacement, and belonging.
Janet Cook-Rutnik, who has lived and worked in the Virgin Islands since 1969, presents Orgánica, a series incorporating handmade paper and upcycled materials. Her multidisciplinary practice—spanning painting, sculpture, printmaking, video, and public art—engages deeply with Virgin Islands history and environment. In this body of work, she emphasizes sustainability and transformation, reimagining discarded materials as renewed forms.
The opening reception will take place on Saturday, April 4, from 4–7 PM and will feature live music by emerging artist Adeline Shaw.
Bajo El Sol Gallery is home to thought-provoking monthly exhibitions, readings by award winning V.I. writers & poets, documentary screenings on some of the Caribbean’s most respected thinkers, as well as talks by local academics and visiting curators. The gallery is in Mongoose Junction, St. John a 5min walk from the Cruz Bay ferry.
