The prefix re in Spanish it expresses a movement backward, a repetition, which in many cases implies opposition and disagreement with the events that have taken place, combining and articulating memory and action. Rehabitar, Therefore, it is to return, in fact, to the past place and claim it as an important space in the face of the possible apathy or devastating disinterest that characterizes our times.

The three creators who participated in the MAPR 2025–2026 Artist-in-Residence Program address the theme of memory, each from different conceptual perspectives, and through different media present us with stories related to the past in search of its recovery.

Amara Abdal Figueroa with her Series Los Guineos, Order Axisol Part of the homonymous term morada, the soil or earth. Throughout her career, the artist has studied the clay of the island, creating ceramics that, as she herself comments, “can end up in fragments or productive failures.” This is an experimental work that puts all its attention into the study and recovery of the types of soil, and this time led her to the manufacture of a kiln to burn her ceramics. Her work, in a constant process, does not seek immediate results. For the artist, researching and testing constitute the very essence of the work. The experience of the earth connects her with the ancestral past, clarifying the present.

The installation of Brenda Cruz Díaz The water always returns to its course: back to the mangrove, delves into what was the community of El Fanguito, on the banks of the Caño Martín Peña. A community that was born as a result of the changes in economic policies implemented by the government starting in the late 1930s and that forced the peasants to abandon the lands in order to settle around the city. In this work, the artist carried out a documentary research and interviewed people who were part of that community. In this way, according to the artist: “the work reaffirms the need to confront the past, to live with the past, as an exercise of collective memory and imagination, through art, of new forms of community and coexistence.” The installation poetically summarizes what was the habitat of these Puerto Ricans.

Also Adriana García Soto and her work There used to be a neighborhood here She seeks to rescue the collective memory and thus rehabilitate it. This is the community of San Mateo de Cangrejos, adjacent to the Municipal Hospital of San Juan, today the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico, which was expropriated by the government in the early 2000s. Currently, that is where the Santurce Park is located. To recreate it, the artist uses illustrations of the houses and virtual 3D models of these, which she re-locates to their original positions through augmented reality. As part of the process, she uses written documentation, images from the era, and interviews with members of the disappeared community.

These three artists offer us different perspectives on the past in an effort to reclaim and thus rehabilitate it, opening the way for an open dialogue to future reinterpretations.