Amara Abdal Figueroa
Amara Abdal Figueroa (b. 1990, Puerto Rico) graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013, earning both a BFA and B.Arch. In 2012 and 2013, Amara contributed in the restoration of a 19th Century coffee plantation in Medellin, Colombia, which became Campos de Gutierrez- an international residency program. There, she worked on studio development for residing artists. In upstate New York, Amara is working on Arts Letters and Numbers to transform the cotton mill and house into an interdisciplinary space. She is interested in spaces that foment creation.
"How are both of these, once axes of development in their respective areas, the perfect architectural types for the production of coffee, cotton, or visionary works?"
Most recently, Amara took part of the research team of Kuwait's National Pavilion in La Biennale di Venezia di Architettura titled Acquiring Modernity with the objective of investigating the repercussions of commissioning architectural works towards the formation of the State. To help articulate the nation’s history of modernization, the team has chosen to focus it’s participation on the establishment of the Kuwait National Museum specifically through the envisaged program of its second more modern yet defunct iteration. It is an effort to generate meaning and restore a sense of ownership and responsibility over Kuwait's built environment.
The project is obsessively local and utterly informal despite its appearance at la Biennale; its highest aspiration is to influence authorities so that when the project returns to Kuwait from Venice, it will have found a place inside of the Kuwait National Museum as a sort of ‘Special Projects’ program, or research and documentation center.
Commissioned by the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters.
