Bony Ramirez
Flora of Communication reflects on soccer and the World Cup as a universal language, capable of bringing people together across countries, cultures, and identities. Figures gather around and within the form of a ball, facing one another in conversation, sharing a common moment of connection. The red vines and floral elements surrounding them evoke roots and organic systems — each vine following its own path, yet bound to the others by a shared thread, mirroring how the World Cup gathers people from vastly different backgrounds through a collective love of the sport. The work speaks to unity and coexistence, making MetLife Stadium, a place of gathering and celebration, an especially fitting home for the sculpture.
Bony Ramirez was born in 1996 in Tenares, Salcedo, Dominican Republic, and lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey. His work stays rooted in his Dominican heritage, blending Caribbean elements with his own distinctive visual language.
Ramirez adheres life-size paper figures — bold, often mysteriously oversized or contorted — onto painted wood panels, creating mixed-media portraits of contemporary Caribbean life shadowed by the colonial history embedded in it. His expanded practice incorporates wallpaper, swords, and rhinestones, adding physical and allegorical depth to the stories he tells.
His work draws heavily on Mannerist and Renaissance portraiture — still lifes, solid-colored backgrounds, romanticized gore — reclaiming these European styles by recontextualizing them with Caribbean objects, scenery, and history.
Ramirez’ soccer ball sculpture Flora of Communication will be auctioned at Christie’s, with all proceeds benefiting the artist as well as the arts nonprofits ARTS 14C and Studio in a School.
