Jorge González focuses on recovering the craft knowledge of Puerto Rico, where, because of the colonial condition of the island, almost all goods are imported from the U.S. mainland. Central to his research has been the Casa Klumb, a 1947 modernist house in San Juan, now in disrepair, that German-American architect Henry Klumb designed in response to the island's culture and climate. González was inspired by Klumb's collaboration with craft workers to found the Escuela de Oficios (Trade School), which functions as a symbolic space that honors Klumb's ideals about learning. Knowledge-ranging from ancestral techniques to collective practices-is shared in meetings. These meetings are mobile, occurring throughout Puerto Rico, so participants can learn from local artisans and engage in conversation, workshops, and exhibitions.

González developed the Banquetas Chéveres (Chéveres Stools) through these encounters, beginning with conversations with Eustaquio Alers, a weaver from Aguadilla who works with hammock-weaving techniques. González adapted his technique to create stool seats for wooden stools he designed with artisan Joe Hernández from Ciales. With the participation of Escuela de Oficios members, the first four stools were made. In 2015, in New York, González inserted the stools, without authorization, in the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the exhibition Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980 at the Museum of Modern Art. Easy to fold and carry, the stools embody the nomadic and flexible nature of the Escuela de Oficios.

For SITElines, González has made new stools, which can be moved throughout the exhibition spaces. González collaborated on their construction with MAOF, a wood-salvaging research and design studio in San Juan, and the seats were woven in workshops guided by Alers. In the Caribbean, the word chévere means "more than cool." In one of González's research trips in Puerto Rico, he met the Chévere family, potters who live in the caves of Las Cabachuelas de Morovis and descend from the Taino Indians, thought to have been eradicated during the Spanish conquest. González dedicates the name of the stools to the survival of Indigenous knowledge and people like the Chéveres.

- Pablo León de la Barra