The Bata Project at EFA Project Space

Offering an enhanced public recognition of the Caribbean Diaspora, The Bata Project explores the tradition of house dresses worn in the Caribbean, mainly by women at “home” through community engagements incorporating aesthetics that honors folklore in the urban landscape. By infusing a contemporary lens into intimate memories via community exchange, this project offers a generative hybridity, intergenerational connections, merging of contemporary and fashion history with urban folklore, bringing oral histories, visual art and performance into the public commons. 

I wanted to focus on the bata because the Puerto Rican diaspora is fast becoming an “endangered species” in New York City, and the histories we - as the Puerto Rican diaspora - know are also disappearing. Within our current urban contemporary life, it is not common for women to wear “batas" or house coats anymore. They are now considered folkloric. I believe that it is important to recognize and remember our matriarchal figures wearing these special clothes and how that represents sustaining home, culture, families and life. This public project shares how this day dress was part of our matrilineal superhumans, who handled layers of everyday jobs, wearing the bata as the last of the work uniforms worn before bed and/or on weekend mornings, clearing the home, yelling at Con Edison over the phone, making breakfast for the morning meal. 

This public project is an opportunity to reconnect and celebrate the bata as an urban folk piece and elevate this domestic dress evolution through an interdisciplinary exhibition of visual art, storytelling, performance, and music. The twist is how this project highlights this “at-home island fashion” into the conversation, and raises visibility for maternal lineages along with the impact of the home and community life on our public life within contemporary urban folklore. There are many cultures who have house coats as part of their home life. Focusing on the bata creates a deep connection with other folkloric histories around this day dress also known as the duster, muumuu, or housecoat - which brings the bata into a universality with many other cultures in NYC. 

I invite peers and community members of all ages, genders to participate and wear their batas to join in the interdisciplinary discourse of this project via visual art, storytelling, music, and sharing of folklore. Gatherings occur through a series of public events which highlight this house dress and creates interconnections with fashion and fusion of the isla/urban communities. With multiple creative access points, this project offers agency to multiple community members and artists as well as the general public. 

In this process of togetherness and community building, the focus is on the energy of the group that gathers, and the group grows organically through word of mouth as previous participants invite their friends and family members to join them at the next public gathering. This togetherness supports invitations to the public to join in the conversation and share stories. 

As The Bata Project unfolds, we will witness how this dress - worn outside in the public eye - subverts social expectations and celebrates the power of home and stories connected with home, care, the body, and history as something you bring with you everywhere. 

These gatherings include photo sessions and video documentation of public sharings.