Whitney Museum: historic showcase of Puerto Rican art

The natural disasters that have hit us in the last five years, such as hurricanes Irma and María, earthquakes in the southern area and this year’s hurricane Fiona – in addition to the Covid-19 pandemic – have brought death, destruction and hardships to the nation. A reality from which we are only just beginning to recover. But those fateful attacks of nature also had a creative effect on artists’ sensibilities. And it is not surprising that, in an era of global warming and climate change, art is one more means to denounce the growing dangers and, equally, inspire and sensitize the population to achieve positive changes.

It is what defines the art exhibition “There Is No Post-Hurricane World: Puerto Rican Art After Hurricane Maria”which opens next Wednesday, November 23, at Whitney Museum of American Artin New York, where it will be on display through April 23, 2023.

It is, as defined by the cultural institution, the first scholarly exhibition of contemporary Puerto Rican art presented by a major U.S. museum in nearly half a century, with twenty intergenerational artists from Puerto Rico and the diaspora.

With more than 50 works created in different media -photographs, installations, performances, videos and poems, among others-the exhibition was organized by the Puerto Rican curator Marcello Guerrerotogether with the associate curator Jennifer Rubio, Angelica Arbelaez, family mate of Rubio Butterfield yes Sophia Silvaformer Fellow of Latin American Art at the Whitney Museum.

“This exhibit marks two anniversaries: mine, five years after I entered the museum, and the exhibit’s, five years after Hurricane María,” says Guerrero, who recalls how painful it was to see it all on television. of the cyclone, in September 2017.

“I was on maternity leave at the time, but when I got back to work, talking about future exhibitions, I suggested the idea. The curatorial department accepted it and they were very enthusiastic because not only is it a very personal subject, but it is also a way for an institution like the Whitney, which focuses on the art of the United States, to also think about what Porto means Rico in the United States.United”, explains the curator, born and raised on the island.

An exhibition that, according to Guerrero, not only represents an important moment that takes a look at the art of Puerto Rico, something that has never been done before in this museum, “but it’s also a form of what it means to be a museum of America in the 21st century.”

The curator explains it the title of the exhibit alludes to a poem by Puerto Rican poet Raquel Salas Rivera, also part of the exhibit “and keeps it lowercase to honor how the poet wrote that line in her collection of poems.” “The exhibition explores the five years since Hurricane Maria to highlight pressing concerns in Puerto Rico, including the trauma created by the collapse of infrastructure, the devastation of ecological histories and landscapes, loss, reflection and mourning, the resistance and protest and the economic migration of Puerto Ricans to the United States, as a result of the economy, during the boom in American tourism and relocation to the island”.

Similarly, Guerrero explains that the exhibition offers five thematic sections: Fractured Infrastructures; Tourism criticism; Processing of losses, mourning and reflection; Ecology and landscape; Resistance and protest. All within an open design that reflects the curatorial interest that the works and their discourses dialogue with each other”.

Dialogues with the community

Guerrero understands that there have always been cultural organizations in New York that have been concerned with making art and Puerto Ricans visible in New York communities.

“We are not the first, but we are doing our part and we want to contribute to this dialogue and rapprochement with the communities. My intention with the exhibit is, more than anything else, to present a theme that Puerto Ricans feel identified with, proud of what they see on the walls, that they see themselves represented.”Guerrero proposes, while noting that there are multiple efforts across the Whitney Museum’s education department to reach out to smaller organizations in different New York City boroughs. As well as maintaining a close partnership with Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies.

And while there have been small exhibits of Puerto Ricans at the Whitney Museum, Guerrero says they haven’t been as extensive as they are now. “We did exhibitions of Latin art. For example, my first show was a group of seven Latino artists who all thought about the indigenous architecture of Mexico, Brazil and Peru, using it in the context of the United States.

Indeed, it is notable that the Whitney is a great platform for artists. He mentions the famous Puerto Rican plastic artist Daniel Lind-Ramos, who exhibited his works at the museum’s biennial in 2019, an entity that also acquired one of his works, entitled “María María”, also inspired by the hurricane.

“But I wanted to give space to other artists,” adds the curator, indicating that they wanted “new and fresh looks,” even if it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re young artists. He gives the example of Cándida Álvarez, who is an artist born in Brooklyn, of Puerto Rican parents, who lives in Chicago. He also mentions the Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist Awilda Sterling-Duprey, who this year participated in the latest edition of the Whitney Biennial.

“That’s why I wanted to present that effervescence and energy that you feel around contemporary Puerto Rican art, new artists and new visions,” says Guerrero, to underline that “I wanted some of that energy that I see when I’m going to Puerto Rico.”

Precisely, the curator explains that the selection of the invited artists was made once she began to define the exhibition criteria, which helped her a lot in channeling the type of artists’ research. “When we said ‘let’s put the exhibition on the calendar for 2022’, it also helped me in the discussion of the exhibition because I wanted to take a broad look at these last five years and, therefore, I wanted the works to come from 2017 to 2022 and this , in itself, excludes some artists who would not have fit into that framework”.

Furthermore, he explains that curators like to “discover” artists on social networks where they can see their work. “Some of us curators use platforms like Instagram (to see what they’re showing). I also travel to Puerto Rico at least twice a year and have been visiting workshops for years.

According to the curator, when doing group exhibitions, the theme of diversity is very important in all aspects, including the media used by the artists. For this in this exhibition she have videos, installations, photographs, paintings, performances, and she underlines that it is a curatorial strategy to give a more dynamic vision and that the public has the opportunity to “see a little bit of everything. “

“After installing everything and having this moment alone in the exhibition, it’s very special to see in this project the work of these artists and the understanding between curator and artist that goes a bit beyond saying ‘this is a photograph’. “, adds the curator and gives an example of Puerto Rican artist Frances Gallardo’s work on the subject of Sahara dust. “At first I thought it was out of the question, but when I started to define the exhibition’s topic more, I decided to review the theme with her and I started to see how it worked and how it affected people in Puerto Stecca.”

In that work, Guerrero describes, Gallardo collected dust particles from the Sahara in Puerto Rico and, because he lives in Ithaca and studied at Cornell University in New York, was able to connect with a nanoscopic technology laboratory, which gave him allowed to see, Through the microscope, the dust particles in a larger dimension. “This is converted into a digital image, then goes through a printer which crops it out and creates a kind of grid in the background of the work; In the foreground are some big black rocks and behind it is this grid that she draws by hand with colored pencils, reminiscent of weather maps.”

Talking to the artist, the curator says, the idea was born of making the same grid on the wall where the 14 drawings are displayed, eight in a visible horizontal line, representing the horizon, as a way to connect the visitor” so that they understand that this is the air we breathe in Puerto Rico.” “This is another of the conditions that affect the life of Puerto Ricans today and that is not visible. It is this idea of ​​the force of the environment that is present but sometimes we don’t see it.”

Multiple expressions of art

For Warrior, artistic expression responds to every moment of a country’s history. That’s why he believes there are many versions and many types of art. In this sense, he says that the exhibition does not mean that it is the only look at Puerto Rican art.

“In this case, what they all perhaps have in common is that it is very difficult for Puerto Ricans to separate themselves from politics. We are political and colonized beings, and even if you don’t like to talk about politics, there is. It is what we see in the works. They are artists who, for me, although they don’t talk (explicitly) about status or politics, they do it in a very sophisticated way where they take a theme or an angle, but always underpin everything a conversation about what is Puerto Rich in the past five years and what it means to live on the island,” he explains and points out that this exhibition will have an impact on other artists in the New York cultural milieu.

The exhibition is also accompanied by a catalog with 11 entries that represent the same idea of ​​having authors from Puerto Rico and the diaspora, indicates Guerrero, indicating that it has three essays that “are typical of what one would see in an art catalog ” , but there is also a reflection of eight voices of Puerto Ricans “reflecting on the island, outside the political clichés of status”.

Likewise, the exhibition will also have public programs and the presence of artists. For example, on December 4, the poet Raquel Salas Rivera was invited for an evening of poetry and then Awilda Sterling will appear to present her performance. Also, mention the writer and journalist Anna Theresa Toro and the essayist and intellectual Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, among many others, who “have had a great platform in recent years to express their ideas.”

Also, there will be a downloadable exhibition catalog in Spanish later, Guerrero says, noting that the The Whitney Museum is a “big stage for artists and that dialogue will never cease to be there”. That’s why he believes that “when we talk about contemporary artists, the same way we look at artists from Los Angeles or Chicago, Puerto Rico should be another place to see more artists.”

participating artists

Candida Alvarez

Gabriella N. Baez

Rogelio Baez Vega

Sofia Cordova

Daniel DeJesus

Frances Gallardo

Sofia Gallisa Muriente

Michele Luciano

Javier Orfon

Elle Perez

Gamaliel Rodriguez

Raquel Salas Rivera

Gabriela Salazar

Armig Santos

Garvin Sierra Vega

Edra Soto

Awilda Sterling-Duprey

Yiyo Tirado Rivera

Gabriella Torres Ferrer

Lulu Varona