Drawing from Afro-Caribbean, Latin American, and Mediterranean influences, Surel’s sculptural language weaves together botanical, mythical, and human elements. Her hand-coiled vessels and ceramic mosaics explore womanhood, interconnectedness, and the cyclical nature of life. Embedded motifs such as saw palmetto, beautyberries, conch shells, ovaries, scales, and mermaids, speak to the deep entanglement of body and nature, memory and myth. In Greta Chamotta / Great Love, fragmented female figures emerge as hybrid beings. Part goddess, part earth—blending with plant and animal forms. These figures carry alter egos that express maternal bonds, sisterhood, and shifting selfhood.

Surel’s sculpture, “It All Begins With a Sea Creature,” features a scaled figure holding a shell not for listening but for speaking. This artist’s choice, Surel explains, transforms the conch from a mere adornment into an amplifier and a symbol of feminine voice, resonance, and resistance, embodying the idea that the figure “was not born to hold silence.”

“Her body was made of scales and she held a shell, not to listen, but to speak. For she was not born to hold silence”