For her ZieherSmith solo debut, Yanira Vissepo presents a new body of paintings that are as much built as they are painted. Continuing her process of staining raw canvas, Vissepo layers shimmering gradients with collaged linocut-printed black linen cutouts, creating works that hover between construction and improvisation. While rooted in metaphorical reflections on her personal journey from Puerto Rico to Nashville to Japan, these dreamy hybrids of landscape and still life invite meditation on transition -- embracing change as a site of transformation and healing. Statement continues below.

Viewers encounter a broad and vibrant spectrum, both in palette and in the reach of Vissepo’s naturalist imagination. Seeds and spores, spadix and spathe, stems and stamens float, mingle, and meander across the canvas, embodying ideas of environmental impact, impermanence, and the possibility of renewal through buoyant bursts of color.

Saturation, form, and feeling are constants in Vissepo’s work, here channeled into stylized natural compositions inspired by landscape snapshots from her native Puerto Rico, her current home in Middle Tennessee, the speculative fiction of Octavia E. Butler, and recent travels to Echizen, Japan. While in Echizen, a village with a 1,500-year history of papermaking, Vissepo further developed her practice of water-based woodblock printing, deepening her engagement with material, process, and ritual.

Specific botanical references throughout the exhibition include Tennessee’s broadleaf plantain, a wild weed traditionally used for its healing properties; the iris, the state flower of Tennessee; Echinacea tennesseensis, the medicinal purple coneflower endemic to the Nashville area that has recovered from endangered status; the Puerto Rican onion flower, drawn from the folk tale of the Little Onion; and the Japanese chrysanthemum, a symbol of longevity and rejuvenation and the emblem of the Imperial Family, which Vissepo studied closely while in residence at MI-LAB.

Reflecting on her time in Echizen, Vissepo notes: “The paper village was part of my everyday life -- walking to Otaki Shrine to say hello to the paper goddess. Studio discipline became a central focus, and bringing that rigor back into this body of work felt like kismet: Puerto Rico, Tennessee, and Japan living together in memory paintings. Water is my friend -- the sun on my face, leaves turning and speaking to me, whispering hello, waking up to see the sky for the first time, again.”

In addition to her solo exhibition at ZieherSmith in Edgehill, Vissepo is included in the Frist Art Museum exhibition In Her Place, featuring works including the 18-foot-long painting Water Meadow. Other recent solo presentations include at the Nashville International Airport and the Lyndon House Arts Center in Athens, Georgia, and her works have been seen in shows at Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Lipscomb University, SoHo House, and 21c Museum, among others.