Photo Credit: Angel Gabriel
Prolific and inspired. These are just two words that can describe CK Ledesma. Their artwork is all over the city, brightly colored faces that run the length of buildings such as Woodland Pattern Book Center, bus shelters and the interior of the new Mitchell St. library. They are also the brains behind Cosecha creative space, a collective that uses community as a medium for art. The way that is done is through an ambitious project called “Proyecto Conbif.” CK will send you the ingredients to make their favorite comfort meal, complete with instructions on how to prepare, a playlist to listen to, as well as a brief history of how canned corn beef made it to his home of Puerto Rico. The idea is to essentially transport you into their home, to feel the urgency of cooking for yourself and to ultimately nourish yourself the way CK was nourished. I recently caught up with CK, who is in Milwaukee for a brief time before heading back to La Isla. We talked about how they recently became the recipient of the prestigious Nohl fellowship award, and the grand honor that it was to have it bestowed upon them.
How is activism tied into your art and do you feel it is important that it be part of what you do?
I don’t think it's necessarily the role of an artist to be an activist, but the way I tie it into my artwork is to expose more history and narratives around Afro-Caribbean culture, specifically in Puerto Rico, through crops and food. Ultimately, I am exposing a lot of the history of how food was brought to the island and a lot of it leads back to slavery. That is the way I use activism in my art, to look at it head on. I am exploring and investigating culturally relevant foods and crops, digging into those conversations that we usually don’t have.
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Tell me about Proyecto Conbif.
It all started at the height of the pandemic, I was trying to organize a food fundraiser for Cosecha Creative space, and I was already investigating food systems. I was feeling really stir-crazy, as I am sure most of us were because of the pandemic. Food has always been a great connector and a great escape and I thought, “If I can’t make the food for the people and sit with them at the table, I will bring them into my kitchen.” I sent 10 food kits at first. I then fell into a rabbit-hole where I began investigating how corn beef first arrived in Puerto Rico. I began investigating the lineage of slavery in my family, and learned they were working in the sugar cane fields and corn beef was used to keep them fed. My mother helped me coin the term “experiential gestures'”, which is a way to properly encapsulate Proyecto Conbif. Gestures that provide an experience. I would also say that the real medium used in the project was the United States postal service as they were the ones that delivered the kits.
What is the Nohl Fellowship award and why was it such an honor for you to receive it?
Mary Nohl was a Wisconsin artist, who lived in that house in Fox Point with all the sculptures. When she passed away, she left something like $9.6 million to the arts. Out of that money that she left behind, the fellowship was created in her name in 2003. The fellowship is entirely competitive, and two established artists are selected every year along with three emerging artists. It’s an honor to be sharing this fellowship with the other artists who received it and I truly admire—Nirmal Raja, Rosy Petri, Leah Schretenthaler and Janelle Gramling. The artist is allowed to create their art for a full year without the restriction of funds. It is the only fellowship of its kind in Wisconsin that has the longevity it has and brings in renowned curators that work for galleries and museums and have eyes on contemporary art. It was my first time applying as an established artist, so it was an honor to be seen by them. It exposes the work we do in Wisconsin on a national level. They were able to see that my work lives in community and social interactions and not in the gallery and museum world.
What is the next project you have in mind?
I have been growing my own sugar cane here in Puerto Rico and hope to start farming it in Wisconsin as well. I want to distill my own batch of rum from a sort of diasporic sugar cane. All my new projects will definitely be food related.
