The prevailing energy in Mr. Lind-Ramos’s assemblages is vibrant, even joyous. They incorporate coconuts and palm fronds and basketballs and gloved hands that stick out to strike drums and tambourines. There is a proletarian humor in his juxtapositions of an old television, heirloom skillets or a glass food-display case with jute fabric and tropical plant debris.

When the bright blue tarps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency covered punctured roofs across the island, Mr. Lind-Ramos worked them in as well. A FEMA tarp forms the vivid vestment of his “María, María,” an object-rendering of the Virgin Mary that also plays on the hurricane’s name, and that appeared in the biennial. (The Whitney later acquired the piece.)

“Where you find objects related to catastrophe, you can create images,” Mr. Lind-Ramos said. “Because there’s a history there, not only in terms of where the object comes from, but a history related to the consequence of the catastrophe.”

“So you can create images that are not that complicated to build — but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be strong and won’t reach a lot of people. There’s a big power there.”

For years, the power of Mr. Lind-Ramos’s work was closely held in community — in his hometown, and in the network of artists on the island, many of whom he taught over the years, first as a high school teacher, then as a professor at the University of Puerto Rico. “That commands an enormous amount of respect,” said Marina Reyes Franco, a curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. “And the stories that he chooses to tell are very rooted.”