Sin Título, from the series La Tempestad

Rodríguez’s unsettled picture was inspired by Italian artist Giorgione’s The Tempest (about 1501), a puzzling painting that portrays a nude woman nursing a child under the watchful eye of a man, possible a soldier. Like The Tempest, Rodríguez’s painting gathers disparate elements and offers no clear narrative. Three figures stand, sit, or walk through an environment that lacks a stable ground, the emotional intensity evoking the uprootedness of exile or the upheaval of troubled times.

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, 2013