Can we hold our relationships to one another as sacred? How do we respond to our environment and effect change? What can we build together from a faltering world?

At once a sacred mountain and a social microcosm, this sensitive environment—constructed from the detritus of imperialism—invites visitors to build the responses that might carry us home. Meant to be collectively inhabited, Raft is an emergent space inspired in part by Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, a painting that frames the horrors that unfold when human lives are treated as expendable. Whether arriving alone or as part of a group activation, visitors are invited to take action, to gather, to take stock of who is present, and consider what must be done.

In this installation premiere, Yanira Castro (2023 Creative Capital Awardee) and team—including Kathy Couch, RPI alum Stephan Moore, Ariel Lembeck, LD DeArmon, and access doula Marielys Burgos Meléndez—craft a world meant to be felt and moved through, where visitors enter into a dialogue with the actions of others who came before. Intimate voices can be heard embedded inside the installation, interwoven with sounds from Castro’s archipelago origins. Here, participants can contribute to this expanding archive of recorded stories, sharing their own early memories of soil and dirt.

During the group activations on Thursday and Friday, the installation closes for a shared experience requiring RSVP that begins at listed start times and lasts roughly 60–75 minutes. The installation can be experienced fully in either group or open hours, or both.