The artist’s dreamlike paintings, inspired by his childhood home, led to a collaboration with a global pop icon. Now he’s opening a casita in Bruton – what will the locals think?
Angel Otero is on the brink of tears. He’s describing the feeling of being part of fellow Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny’s La Casita – a set the musician used on stage during his 31-show residency on the island last year, a recreation of a typical single-storey home found across Puerto Rico and the wider Latin American diaspora.
“When I was invited, of course, I accepted,” Otero tells me, standing in his temporary studio in Somerset. “Although I tend to shy away from things like that. The replica is a very similar setting to the one I grew up in, and I had multiple feelings when I got there. Of course, there’s the spectacle of being on the stage of a significant artist of our time, who is from my island. But it also transported me into the subject I’ve been working on for so long. It was a sort of validation, seeing people enjoying the culture, people specifically from my kind of upbringing.”
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The artist’s dreamlike paintings, inspired by his childhood home, led to a collaboration with a global pop icon. Now he’s opening a casita in Bruton – what will the locals think? Angel Otero is on the brink of tears....
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