In her solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery, Monserrat-born, England-based artist Veronica Ryan engages themes of global movement and trade with humble materials including fruits, seeds and other organic matter. Ryan has pointed out that familiar foods bring people together to share meals and memories; she has also incorporated materials like ash from the Soufrière Hills volcano, which has covered the town in which she was born. Pleasure and trauma also meet in this pile of stoneware cocoa beans, a product that brings happiness to many, sometimes at the expense of enslaved workers. (On view in Chelsea through May 28th).
