Statement

My work explores how identity and perception are shaped, disrupted, and transformed. Within Variations, the silhouette has become a recurring visual language—a boundary between what is visible and what remains concealed, between the individual and the forces that shape them.

I am interested in what happens when that boundary begins to shift, fracture, or dissolve. The figure moves between representation and abstraction, at times clearly recognizable and at others embedded within organic structures, fragmented spaces, color, gesture, and psychological landscapes. What initially appears familiar can become uncertain. Faces emerge and disappear. Forms overlap. The distinction between interior and exterior becomes increasingly unstable.

This evolution reflects what I describe as a post-deconstructivist approach. I am interested not only in dismantling established structures, identities, and ways of seeing, but in what becomes possible afterward. Deconstruction becomes a passage rather than a destination. The figure can be broken apart, destabilized, and reconfigured without attempting to restore what previously existed.

Memory and cultural inheritance also move through the work. Puerto Rican imagery, personal experience, displacement, rupture, and beauty enter without resolving into a single narrative. They coexist, collide, and transform one another.

Across the work, the silhouette persists. Even as the figure becomes fractured, abstracted, concealed, or reconstructed, some trace remains. For me, this persistence speaks to the possibility of renewal—not as restoration, but as transformation.

Renewal does not require a return.

Bio

Arturo Pérez Saad is a Puerto Rican–Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, educator, and performer born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and based in New Orleans. His life and practice have been shaped by Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and New York City. Working across painting, drawing, installation, movement, and participatory work, he explores identity, perception, belonging, psychology, and cross-cultural experience. His work highlights the intersections of Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and American identities.

He holds an MFA from Pratt Institute and degrees from the University of New Orleans. His multidisciplinary background includes an Off-Broadway performing arts career and cultural advocacy. His work is held in private collections worldwide.

2015 Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellow at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (NYC).

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