Hoesy Corona is a Baltimore based artist, and former Creative Alliance resident. Climas Malsanos marks his return to the non-profit, with an ongoing collection of artwork that started in 2017. Corona is a Latinx Queer artist with Mexican roots -creating performances, costumes, wall hangings, and installations, all centered around themes of climate change and the movement of people across geography. During a visit to the exhibition, we spoke about how this body of work has progressed and changed, material usage, and the birth of his climate poncho series. You can view Climas Malsanos through June 21 at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore until June 21, 2025.

Interview between Amy Boone-McCreesh and Hoesy Corona

AMY:CAN YOU FIRST TALK ABOUT THE TITLE OF THE EXHIBITION, CLIMAS MALSANOS?

HOESY: Yes, the title of my exhibition is Climas Malsanos or Unhealthy Climates. I think that with every show that deals with this particular body of work, I try to create a title that is reminiscent of our current time. So actually when I did a show in 2023 in New York, at Praxis NY in Chelsea, I called that one Climatic Shocks. And guess what? When it opened, it was when the skies were orange and the air was thick from the fires up north. And when this one opened, we had a mini tornado in Baltimore. So I’m like, oh, my gawd. Just those coincidences, but it’s more than that, right? It’s our time. The climate is shifting and what used to be rare occurrences are happening like this more often. In my practice, I create work that is iteration-based. So I think that I always have these ideas percolating because this body of work has been ongoing since 2017. So titles are always floating around but it’s not until I’m setting up the work that I’m like, oh, okay, this makes sense. We’re in Highlandtown right now, at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, and obviously there’s a big Latine population here. So I thought even the title being in Spanish, kind of a first for me, was fitting and could resonate with the community. 

A:THIS BODY OF WORK SPANS MANY OF YEARS AND MANY MANIFESTATIONS, HOW DID YOUR IDEAS START TO MOVE FROM DEPICTIONS OF THE MIGRANT CHARACTERS INTO ACTUAL OBJECTS AND RELICS THAT THEY MAY USE, LIKE THE PONCHOS?

H:  The objects actually came first and depicted fabulated narratives that highlighted the archetype of the traveler to touch upon notions of forced climate displacement. The work emerged when I was working with Transformer DC, an arts organization in DC, and Victoria Reis invited me to create a large-scale performance at the Hirshhorn Museum one summer. So I had the opportunity to go there, obviously, very excited. I was very familiar with the museum. But really standing there and thinking about it, the actual architecture started to resonate with me. So I was thinking, oh, okay, what can happen here? I was going to be utilizing the 24 windows of the second floor, and I was going to be creating shadow-cast movements with performers. I was thinking about the circular aspect of the museum, the roundness of it, then the idea of something cyclical came to mind. I started thinking about cycles, about nature, about something global that implicated as many people as possible. The final performance, titled Alien Nation, ended up being an amalgamation of my various performance wearables in a processional that moved from the second floor to the courtyard and around the block. But I was missing five windows. And so I was wondering what am I going to do –  I needed five things. So what I ended up making became the first climate ponchos. That’s how they arrived. I didn’t know they were Climate Ponchos yet. I didn’t even know what they were, they were just kind of shaped like serapes or gavanes from Mexico but still I couldn’t yet identify them as a new body of work.

A : ISN’T IT SO FUNNY HOW THAT HAPPENS? THIS SHAPE OR THING COMES OUT OF YOU AND SOMETIMES IT HARD TO IDENTIFY WHY OR WHAT IT IS…

H: Right, and to your point, it’s us being…Artists!  Being attentive, and paying attention to not only our intentions, but then what is actually manifested. A few months prior I had just completed a short performance at the Walters Art Museum inspired by their Latin American collection, and that shape emerged there, actually. So I think that’s why it was so easy to be like, okay, five windows, let me fill them up. It’s going to be this shape made up of two pieces, like a rudimentary garment that protects the body. So it wasn’t until I was reflecting on the performance at the Hirshhorn that I realized there’s something new here, a new body of work is emerging. And then, lo and behold, I was like, oh, these are… I’m going to call them climate ponchos.

And because the performance had already come before it, it just made me realize, oh, okay, it’s honing in on just that idea of the traveler. So that’s where I get the language of the human aspect of climate change, because I’m not necessarily giving you climate data, instead I’m grounding a global problem in intimate narratives about the uneven environmental displacement of people. Because I feel like the waters are rising, fires are happening, the heat index is climbing. We understand what that means, but we don’t necessarily feel or see the human part. So I think that, yeah, the image was already there, the performance had already been set, and then I just started doing iterations at various locations and creating more of these climate ponchos. I was always thinking long term so I made the climate ponchos with more durable materials. I started to think about them in ways that, yes, they would function in the performance, but that they themselves could also hold their own as standalone objects.

A: YOUR WORK SEEMS SO DRIVEN BY MATERIAL – ARE THERE ANY MATERIALS YOU ARE WORKING WITH RECENTLY OR ANY THAT HAVE A PARTICULAR RESONANCE WITH YOU?

H: I feel like I’m just always figuring out solutions for whatever problem I may have in the studio, for instance the printed and woven wall works in this exhibition stem from the pandemic days when I pivoted to photographing a single performer and making digital collages with the photos to make these little sort of vignettes that were extensions of the same body of work. I kind of brought to life the silhouettes on my climate ponchos in a series of performances for the camera. And after a while I had so many digital files and had to figure out what to do with them so I started printing them on fabric, making them into jacquard weavings, and cutting acrylic and steel. Yeah, but generally I think that early on when I was starting to build out these wearables in every performance, it was very much about obfuscating the body. How do you cover the body? So it was all about  what was available. A piece of fabric or, at the time, I was actually working as a florist, so discarded materials, everything from cellophane bags or silk sleeves or ribbons, all of that became fodder for the studio. Because after I stopped painting, if you will, I still had to deal with color somehow. So I started looking outside of the box and I was like, okay this silk floral sleeve is a beautiful lavender. That’s how I’m going to get the color lavender into this piece.

So it started in that way, but now I’m thinking more about my own guilt associated with materials that contribute to pollution. You mentioned some of these nasty materials, like plastic. But they’re very much a part of our world right now. Vinyls, acrylics, essentially all plastics. I sometimes encounter disgruntled people who want to turn the situation around and point the finger at the artist and their use of materials. But I try to remind everyone that these materials are a reflection of all of us as they are very popular and in heavy circulation across the world despite their inherent culpability. So I do think about them as these guilty materials in terms of how they’re directly tied to the shifting climate. Their impact on this world. But I also reluctantly embrace them because these materials are a marker of our time at the same time.

A: WHEN YOU STARTED THIS WORK IN 2017, THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND POLITICAL CLIMATES WERE DIFFERENT. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO REVISIT AND EXHIBIT THIS WORK IN 2025? HOW MIGHT IT INFLUENCE THE WORK YOU MAKE IN THE FUTURE?

H: When the project began in 2017, climate change was already urgent, but public awareness, political will, and cultural responses were still developing. At that time the climate ponchos symbolized migration, displacement, and environmental vulnerability which felt both poetic and prescient, and the performances grounded a global crisis in intimate, human scale narratives. Now, I feel like the climate ponchos resonate even more deeply. With the passing of time climate events have intensified and issues of forced migration, climate justice, and environmental racism have become increasingly visible yet increasingly ignored, and so I feel like the work gains a new urgency. The climate ponchos, in a way used to be seen as symbolic warnings or speculative garments, now I feel like they are records of reality or even protective gear for the present moment. No longer imagining the effects of climate change they are now about enduring them, documenting them, and creatively resisting them.

A: WHEN DOES THE SHOW CLOSE AND ARE THERE ANY EVENTS THE PUBLIC CAN ATTEND BEFORE THE CLOSING?

H: Yes, everyone is welcome to an artist talk on June 16th, at 6:30 PM. Here at Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave Baltimore MD 21224 light fare will be provided so come join us! and the exhibition closes on June 21st, 2025 [open Tue-Sat 12-6pm]

Climas Malsanos was curated by Joy Davis and was made possible in part with support from The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and Creative Alliance.