Bony Ramirez

Bony Ramirez was born in 1996 in Tenares, Salcedo, Dominican Republic, and moved to Perth Amboy, NJ in 2009. He currently lives in Harlem and works in Jersey City, NJ. Born in a small town in the Dominican Republic, Bony Ramirez retains a connection to his Dominican heritage through his art, incorporating elements of the Caribbean with his own distinctive details. Through a combination of painting and drawing, Ramirez adheres life-size paper figures onto painted wood panels. His subjects are bold yet strange, often appearing mysteriously oversized or contorted. Bony Ramirez adheres black and brown drawn figures onto painted wood panels, creating mixed medium portraits that portray contemporary Caribbean life and the underlying European colonialist history that remains in the psyche of individuals. Bony's expanded practice of incorporating new materials into his portraits, namely wallpaper, swords, and rhinestones, to bring physical and allegorical depth to the stories he tells about Caribbean history and daily life. Ramirez’s practice is heavily influenced by Mannerist and Renaissance portraiture as seen through the presence of still lives, solid colored backgrounds, and romanticized gore. The artist’s use of these European styles reflects the colonialist influence on the Caribbean, reclaiming these artistic tropes by re-contextualizing them with Caribbean objects, scenery, and history. (per artist's website, December 2024)