Gabriel Sosa: I want more celebrations

As part of the Boston Public Art Triennial, SMFA-alumnus Gabriel Sosa (MFA’16) created Ñ Press, a community print studio in East Boston—in collaboration with Maverick Landing Community Services—that transforms zines, posters, pamphlets, and artist books into vessels of connection, activism, and education. Workshops held at the press generate posters, handouts, and billboards—such as I want more celebrations —that will appear throughout Boston, transforming these printed texts and images into dynamic messages—a call to engage, to question, to act. Embracing the ephemeral nature of print, Ñ Press dissolves the barriers of public art, decentralizing it and folding it into the fabric of everyday life. 

I want more celebrations was created with Maverick Landing youth in April 2025, focusing on needs and desires in their community. For this text, the group collectively read artist Zoe Leonard’s poem I want a president, 1992—enlarged and reprinted as the inaugural 230 Fenway Billboard project in 2018—in which a typed letter reads: “I want a dyke for president” and continues on to describe a political candidate who has suffered illness, poverty, and loss. Leonard famously concludes with “I want to know why this isn’t possible… that a president is… always a boss and a never a worker…..”

In the workshop, co-facilitated by Paola Ruiz (BA'25), participants created their own text, drafting lists and completing one another’s sentences to shift the focus away from a specific individual and into the impacts of government on the community. Local youth Farah Lachmi, Sumeya Mohamed, José Landaverde, Julián Artica, Ilaf Bachir, Muhamed Bachir, Rafi Bachir, Brian Sologaistoa, and Adam Gaid relay the need for joy, safety, affordable food, and friendship along with open blanks, inviting viewers to fill in your own collective hopes and desires.

Gabriel Sosa, a Cuban-American artist, linguist, educator, and curator, navigates the fluid boundaries of language, memory, and interpretation, drawing from legal proceedings, personal archives, and contemporary visual culture. His work lingers in the space between precision and distortion, where meaning shifts and narratives unravel. Working in both English and Spanish, Sosa at times draws upon his background as an interpreter in the court system to carefully integrate fragments from legal documents and courtroom testimonies to highlight issues of power, justice, and human rights. As an educator, Sosa ensures that his work consistently creates spaces for the public to engage, reflect, and learn from one another. 

Raised in Miami, Sosa (b.1985) lives and works in Boston, teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and serves as Deputy Director of Essex Art Center in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Sosa received an MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2016. He is a 2024 Boston Artadia Awardee and became a member of the inaugural cohort of Collective Futures Fund Grantees in 2021.

About the Boston Public Art Triennial  

For six months, hundreds of thousands of people from Boston, New England, and beyond will experience the power and provocation of bold, brilliant public art. From May to October 2025, the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial will present 15 compelling commissions sprawled across the city. Each visionary local, national, and international artist will produce sculptures, interactive exhibits, or performance-based and community-led activities with an emphasis on East Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, ensuring equitable representation and access. The Triennial 2025’s commissioned works will be joined by additional public art experiences across the city.

Gabriel Sosa: I want more celebrations, 2025, is presented by Tufts University Art Galleries and is proudly supported by and featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial 2025.