¡PRESENTE! The Young Lords in New York
¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York explores the legacy of the Young Lords in East Harlem, the Bronx and the Lower East Side, focusing on specific political events that the Young Lords organized in these locations.
Founded in Chicago in September 1968, the Young Lords Organization later developed a chapter in New York City in July 1969 when various groups came together in the interest of neighborhood improvement and Puerto Rican self-determination. The New York chapter was led by a group of students and young people working together, including Felipe Luciano, Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman, Juan González, Juan “Fi” Ortiz, David Pérez and Miguel Melendez. Juan Gonzalez underscored the need to speak with the people of the neighborhood to begin their activist work: “We must go to them…to the masses. They may know something we don’t. So, first, we must go to the people of El Barrio.” Walking through the streets of East Harlem, the young group asked local residents about their biggest concerns in the neighborhood and the answer was nearly unanimous: garbage. The City’s Department of Sanitation rarely came to pick up garbage in East Harlem.
The Lords organized an accumulation of garbage at the center of Second and Third Avenues, near 106th, 111th, 116th and 118th Streets. Within a few days, the mayor’s special assistant came to visit El Barrio and sanitation trucks began making regular stops in East Harlem. Many more young people joined the cause and activism of the Young Lords including Luis Garden Acosta, Carlos Aponte, Connie Cruz, Jenny Figueroa, Gloria Rodriguez, Iris Morales, and Denise Oliver.
EXHIBITION OUTLINE
El Museo’s exhibition draws from works in the museum’s own collection including copies of the Young Lords weekly newspaper, Palante. It also explores the legacy of the Young Lords and the relationship between art and activism. Images by photographer Hiram Maristany that feature the Young Lords’ Garbage Offensive, their take over of the First Spanish Methodist Church of East Harlem (later renamed by the Young Lords as The People’s Church), their free morning breakfast program, the rerouting of a TB-testing truck and the funeral of Julio Roldán will all be highlighted in the exhibition.
Paintings and political prints (Antonio Martorell, Domingo García, and Marcos Dimas) from El Museo’s permanent collection will be on display. Works commissioned specifically for this exhibition by Coco Lopez, JC lenochan, Miguel Luciano, and Shellyne Rodriguez are also featured.
¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York will be exhibited at The Bronx Museum of the Arts (July 2 – October 15, 2015), El Museo del Barrio (July 22-December 12, 2015), and Loisaida Inc. (July 30 – October 10, 2015). The exhibition is co-organized by all three institutions.
At El Museo del Barrio the exhibition is made possible with Public Support from Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and the New York City Council.
CUT N’ MIX: Contemporary Collage
This exhibition explores the work of artists experimenting with collage and collage techniques in ways that expand the gestures of cutting paper and mixing various mediums together. It takes as its point of departure some of the concepts from Dick Hebdidge’s series of essays collectively titled Cut N Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music, published in 1980. In this text, Hebdidge explored the variations of Caribbean reggae and dancehall and other related styles of music as emblematic markers of Caribbean ideas of nationhood, belonging, and the making of culture.
Hebdidge notes the following about additional versions of a song, a kind of sound collage that is made from the original melody: On the dub, the original tune is still recognizably there, but it is broken up. The rhythm might be slowed down slightly, a few snatches of song might be thrown in and then distorted with echo. (p. 83)
This idea of an original form of working (the paper collage) that has been changed in some way through more radical processes is addressed in various ways in this exhibition. So-called traditional collages are included, in which papers or photographs or prints or magazine images are placed over other layers of paper. In addition, more “extreme” versions of collage are featured, such as layered and burnt linoleum, overlaid cardboard and fabric, gigantic collaged works, and pop-style drawings collaged into digital videos.
The artists included in the exhibition range from established artists who are veterans of collage to new generations of artists experimenting with this malleable medium.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Elia Alba, Jesse Amado, Blanka Amezkua, Javier Barrera, Maria Berrio, Cecilia Biagini, Michael Paul Britto, José Camacho, Karlos Carcamo, Nat Castañeda, Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Matias Cuevas, Rafael Ferrer, Roger Gaitan, Carolina Gomez, Javier Ramirez/NADIE, Carlos Gutierrez Solana, Hector Madera, Glendalys Medina, Alex Nuñez, Catalina Parra, Carlos Rigau, Hernan Rivera Luque, Linda Vallejo, Rafael Vega and Eduardo Velázquez.
UNDER THE MEXICAN SKY: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film
From the early 1930s through the early 1980s, the Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa (1907–1997) helped forge an evocative and enduring image of Mexico. Among the most important cinematographers of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, Figueroa worked with leading directors from Mexico, the United States and Europe, traversing a wide range of genres while maintaining his distinctive and vivid visual style.
In the 1930s, Figueroa was part of a vibrant community of artists in many media, including Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, Edward Weston and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who sought to convey the country’s transformation following the trauma of the Mexican Revolution. Later, he adapted his approach to the very different sensibilities of directors Luis Buñuel and John Huston, among others. Figueroa spoke of creating una imágen mexicana, a Mexican image. His films are an essential part of the network of appropriations, exchanges and reinterpretations that formed Mexican visual identity and visual culture in the mid-twentieth century and beyond.
The exhibition features film clips, paintings by Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, Manuel Rodriguez Lozano and José Chavez Morado, photographs, prints, posters and documents, many of which are drawn from Figueroa’s archive, the Televisa Foundation collection, the collections of the Museo de la Estampa and the Museo Nacional in Mexico. In addition, the exhibition includes work by other artists and filmmakers from the period such as Luis Buñuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Edward Weston, and Tina Modotti that draw from the vast inventory of distinctly Mexican imagery associated with Figueroa’s cinematography or were heavily influenced by his vision.
UNDER THE MEXICAN SKY: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film is a project by Televisa Foundation and CONACULTA. Corporate Benefactor is Metlife Foundation. Exhibition Benefactor is Tony Bechara. Public support from Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and the New York City Council. Additional support provided by the Circulo de Coleccionistas of El Museo del Barrio, the Mexico Tourism Board, the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and the Mex-Am Cultural Foundation, Inc.
PLAYING WITH FIRE: Political Interventions, Dissident Acts, and Mischievous Actions
Tracing the founding of El Museo del Barrio by Raphael Montañez Ortíz at the end of the 60s, an era of social unrest and radical activism in the United States as well as throughout the Americas, the works in this exhibition target colonialism, imperialism, urban neglect, and cultural hegemony with a vast array of weapons, including irreverence and humor. The artists confront the status quo with a wide range of disarming conceptual strategies and aesthetic detonators. The fire that surfaces in some of the artworks points to an equally dangerous and alluring element that consumes and transforms, one that must be handled with care.
Playing with Fire: Political Interventions, Dissident Acts, and Mischievous Actions purposely welcomes impolite, undomesticated, rebellious, hilarious, and even sacrilegious discourses and gestures that stick out their tongues at oppressive systems and push for the re-politicization of society and the art space.
PARTICIPATING ARTIST
ADAL, Manuel Acevedo, Maris Bustamante, Nao Bustamante, Papo Colo, Abigail DeVille, Alejandro Diaz, Adonis Flores, Ester Hernández, Javier Hinojosa (b. 1956, México, D.F.) with the collaboration of Melquiades Herrera (Mexico, D.F., 1949-2003), Jessica Kairé, Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, Carlos Ortíz, Pedro Pietri, Jesús Natalio Puras Penzo (APECO), Quintín Rivera Toro, Juan Sánchez.
The exhibition, as part of El Museo’s Carmen Ana Unanue gallery is guest curated by multi-disciplinary artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez.
CROSSFIRE: Artist Interviews
Nicolás Dumit Estévez asked artists in Playing with Fire to interview each other as well as to engage with him in Q and A’s dealing with their specific contributions to the exhibition or with their art practice in general. These exchanges aim to spark conversations, debates, and to plant a seed for potential collaborations between the participants. During the last seven years, Estévez has received mentorship in art and everyday life from Linda Mary Montano, a leading figure in the performance art field and a pioneer of the Q and A format within the arts. For example, seePerformance Artists Talking in the Eighties published by University of California Press. Crossfire was conceived and edited by Nicolás Dumit Estévez.
Read interviews here.
MARISOL: Sculptures and Works on Paper
The exhibition represents the artist’s first solo show in a New York museum, features 30 works by the artist, and is the first retrospective to include Marisol’s work on paper in conjunction with her sculptures. The exhibition reestablishes Marisol as a major figure in postwar American art, fosters a broader understanding of her work, and positions it within a larger historical context. The various phases of Marisol’s career are explored, beginning with her early carvings, cast metal works, terracottas, large, complex sculptures, and a broad selection of works on paper.
Marisol is best known for her large figural sculptures, which address a variety of subjects pivotally important in the second half of the twentieth century, including women’s social roles, new family dynamics, as well as historical and contemporary figures. Her sculptures, an amalgam of several artistic styles and references, are composed of drawn and painted elements; plaster casts, carved wood and stone, assembled plywood; industrial materials such as neon, Astroturf, and mirrors; and many found objects including clothing, televisions, and baby carriages.
Among the themes explored in the exhibition are Marisol’s many influences (Neo-Dada, Surrealism, American and Latin American folk art, Pre- Columbian art, etc.); her relationship to postwar art and cultural movements (Pop, Minimalism, and Feminism); her experimentation with materials; her extensive use of portraiture; her politically charged sculptures; and her identity as a female artist from an eclectic background.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, co-published between the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Yale University Press. It will be sold at El Museo’s gift shop, La Tienda.
The exhibition is organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee. Curated by Marina Pacini.
MARISOL: Sculptures and Works on Paper received lead support from The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation. Support provided by the Circulo de Coleccionistas at El Museo del Barrio: Tony Bechara, Nina Fuentes, and Anonymous. National sponsors include the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, ArtWorks, the National Endowment for the Arts, FedEx, and the Henry Luce Foundation. Additional support provided by Audi, and the Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts.
MAXIMILIANO SIÑANI I BEETLES
Beetles is a sculpture made of two 1972 & 1974 Volkswagen Beetles connected by their four wheels. Maximiliano Siñani (b. La Paz, Bolivia, 1989) uses these vehicles to transform them into a static sculptural object posing the question what if two cars can stand in for two people in a moment of intimacy?
The Volkswagen or People’s Car surely was one of most extraordinary success stories in the history of the automobile. The Beetle began life as a pet project of Adolf Hitler, who commissioned engineer Ferdinand Porsche to design a low-cost vehicle for the German people. Production eventually began post-World War II, under the British army then occupying much of Germany. Its manufacture lasted in Germany until 1978-or 1980 for the cabriolet-but continued in Latin America, latterly in Mexico (known as Vocho), until 2003. In all, over 21 million Beetles were made, an all-time record for a single model. Beetles provides a new line of sight on the perceptive signifier of the automobile, the vehicles connected together by its four wheels that cannot go forward but must, instead, stay in the same place.
El Museo presents the artist’s first solo show in a New York museum.
MUSEUM STARTER KIT: Open with Care
“The cultural disenfranchisement I experience as a Puerto Rican has prompted me to seek a practical alternative to the orthodox museum, which fails to meet my needs for an authentic ethnic experience. To afford me and others the opportunity to establish living connections with my own culture, I founded El Museo del Barrio.” -Raphael Montañez Ortiz
This exhibition explores the significance of the creation of El Museo by focusing on works of art made by Raphael Montañez Ortiz, as the artist turns 80 this year. Among the works on display by our founder will be his powerful Archaeological Find #21: The Aftermath (1961), a destroyed sofa as a sculpture from 1961 that is a signature of the artist’s work. Also prominent in this gallery will be his Maya Zemí I and Maya Zemí II, pyramid-shaped cardboard sculptures that illustrate his profound interest in connecting the historic indigenous cultures of the Caribbean and Mesoamerica.
To create a contemporary parallel to Montanez Ortiz’s open and generous vision, El Museo has invited a group of local artists from East Harlem to in turn invite the people of East Harlem to bring objects from their homes for display in the museum’s galleries. This reversal of expected museum exhibition practice underscores the museum’s commitment to creating connections with its audiences but also its interest in interrogating the role of the museum, the potential of the object and the human impulse to collect.
Historic figures who have been included in past exhibitions such as the conceptual and performance artist Papo Colo and photographer and filmmaker Perla de Leon will be highlighted. A handful of work by artists who have never been highlighted at El Museo before will round out the exhibition, including a group of drawings by Zilia Sanchez, found object sculptures by Romy Scheroder, and a space where visitors and tour groups will take a seat created by the Brooklyn based collective, BroLab. One gallery will feature their hand-made benches from recycled plastic, where audiences will be invited to sit and contemplate the invention of their own museum and to fantasize about which works of art and architecture they would include.
Hear from the curator of our new exhibition, Museum Starter Kit: Open with Care! Rocío Aranda-Alvarado shares how the exhibition came together, what surprised her about the show, and reflects on the legacy of Raphael Montañez Ortiz.
El Museo has partnered with a group of local artists and neighbors from El Barrio (East Harlem) to invite community members to bring objects from their homes for display in the museum’s galleries. These displays will grow and change over time, creating ephemeral museums of the moment. This portion of the exhibition celebrates the human impulse to collect and will be organized in collaboration with an Artists/Neighbors Curatorial Committee. Members include: Jaime Davidovich, Alexis Duque, Christopher Lopez, Lina Puerta, Judith Escalona/ medianoche gallery, Debbie Quiñones, and Manny Vega.
Artist in this exhibition, include Beverly Acha, BroLab, Papo Colo, Perla de Leon, Tamara Kostianovsky, LNY, Mata Ruda, Geraldo Mercado, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Zilia Sánchez, Neighbor/Artists Curatorial Committee of East Harlem, Romy Scheroder, Luís Stephenberg. For bios on our participating artists, click here.
PRESENCIA: Works from El Museo’s Permanent Collection
PRESENCIA, the most recent exhibition of work from El Museo’s permanent collection, focuses on ideas of presence and its antithesis, absence. This theme is explored through photography, painting, prints, drawings, masks, and other objects. The exhibition investigates the visibility and invisibility of the human form through the presentation of the body in literal and conceptual ways. The featured artists play with their figures, showing bodies revealed and obscured, evidently displayed or camouflaged.
Featured artists include Luis Mendez, whose figurine sculptures and masks evoke both the ancient and modern stylistically harkening back to the artistic tradition of ancient cultures, yet rendered with the modernist attention to form and space; Shaun El C. Leonardo, a multi-discipline artist who embodies the traditional masculine and heroic figure of the Lucha Libre wrestler to explore the myths they perpetuate; and Oscar Muñoz, whose innovative use of carbon powder renders his self-portraits unstable, oscillating between existence and nothingness. Others on view include Benvenuto Chavajay, Christian Cravo, Roberto Juárez, Fernando Salicrup, and Rafael Tufiño.
LA BIENAL 2013: Here is Where We Jump!
This is the seventh edition of El Museo’s biennial exhibition. Under the title Here is Where We Jump!, La Bienal features work by artists, from newly-minted to mid-career, who live and work in the greater metropolitan area of New York City. La Bienal is a collective exhibition, a research project oriented towards a better understanding of the conditions under which artistic communities produce, present and think through art in our city. The artists’ methods and processes are of significance, as is the context in which they are interpreted. Every edition of El Museo’s Bienal explores, offers and supports experimental and experiential aspects of contemporary art, paying attention not only to current production but also to the way art absorbs from its past and influences its future. La Bienal can be read as an exercise in knowing how this process is constitutive of the history of contemporary American art. Here is Where We Jump is the title of this year‘s edition. This phrase refers to a quote from a fable by Aesop, The Braggart, in which a boast about a jump results in a challenge to repeat that particular feat: “jump here, jump now, here is where you jump.” The location in which the feat can be reenacted and the challenge resolved—here—becomes the important factor in the challenge. The artist becomes, at once, the producer and the receiver that reenacts a gesture of communication with the viewer.
In the course of the research the two curators of La Bienal 2013, Rocio Aranda-Alvarado and Raul Zamudio, began not only a process of studio visits, but also a collective conversation around questions:
on artistic production
on the different references that inform a work or a practice
on the roots, the individual and collective anchors that act as background and point of departure.
on how influences work, on the channels
on the nature of exchange among artists of different generations,
on the potential exchanges among artists
on the relationships between professionals, curators and art historians, and artists
on the different art worlds that constitute an artistic community,
on art and its economic life
on circulation
on knowledge
on reception
on listening and seeing
on spending time with artists
For full information on questions and artists’ responses and bios, click here.
THE COLOSSUS OF EAST HARLEM by Raul Zamudio
The title of the 2013 edition of El Museo Del Barrio’s La Bienal, Here is Where We Jump, is derived from the ancient Greek writer Aesop. Compelling, poetic, and open ended the paraphrase is culled from one of the author’s fables entitled The Braggart. The story entails a man who returns home from traveling abroad and boasts of defeating athletes in places as distant as Rhodes. What supports the braggart’s claim were the spectators of these competitions, and if they happened to be with him when proclaiming his victories they would verify these feats to be true. For full essay, click here.
JUMP HERE, JUMP NOW, OR DON’T TALK ABOUT IT, BE ABOUT IT by Rocio Aranda-Alvarado
El Museo del Barrio is a museum of American art. As proof, we offer this year’s Bienal 2013, which includes works from artists who were mostly born in the United States, including Puerto Rico. As part of organizing this exhibition, Raul Zamudio andI visited many, many studios throughout New York City, including some in Long Island and New Jersey. What has consistently been clear throughout the presentation of these biennial exhibitions of contemporary art by living artists is that there is both a variety and a wealth of ideas, of methods of working and production, of affinities and distinctions. For full essay, click here.
HERE IS WHERE WE JUMP by Chus Martinez
It is really difficult to use arguments to provide an account of a survey exhibition. Arguments normally revolve around questions posed by the curators or by the artists and these questions would help us to name notions and later somehow form a thesis on the subject matter of the show. Here, however, the subject matter is the exhibition itself: the fact that it exists as a confluence of artists who meet every two years at El Museo and exhibit work. La Bienal as an exhibition should be seen not asa result -even if it is the result of extensive research- but as a beginning. A beginning, a potential ”start“ that happens in the galleries every two years and serves toward the cause of visibility for an artist community located in and active in a city. For full essay, click here.
LA BIENAL 2013 PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
La Bienal featured work by artists, from newly-minted to mid-career, who live and work in the greater metropolitan area of New York City. Participating artists include Alejandro Guzman, Alex Nuñez, Becky Franco, Bernardo Navrro Tomas, Christopher Rivera, damali abrams, Edgar Serrano, Elan Jurado, Eric Ramos Guerrero, Ernest Burgos, Ernest Concepcion, Gabriela Salazar, Gabriela Scopazzi, Giandomencio Tonatiuh Pellizzi, Hector Arce-Espasas, Ignacion Gonzalez-Lang, Jonathas De Andrade, Julia San Martin, Kathleen Granados, Kenneth Rivero, Lucas Arruda, Manuel Vega, Matias Cuevas, Mel Xiloj, Miguel Cardenas, Pablo Jansana, Patricia Dominguez & Dominika Ksel, Paula Garcia, Pavel Acosta, Ramon Miranda Beltran, Risa Puno, Sara Jimenez & Kaitlynn Redell, and Sean Paul Gallegos. For additional information on the artists, including their bios and interviews, click here.
LA BIENAL 2013: Here is Where We Jump!‘s presenting sponsor is the Ford Foundation. Leadership support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Major support provided by Tony Bechara. Media Sponsor is Remezcla. Additional support provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and El Museo’s Collector Circle.
superreal: alternative realities in photography and video
EI Museo del Barrio presents superreal: alternative realities in photography and video, an exhibition of photography and video from 1980 to the present that explores the role of photographic mediums in presenting reality. These mediums conventionally assert the notion of reality and accuracy to viewers, but the works in this exhibition investigate the many layers that surround our traditional sense of the real. This exploration manifests through the artists’ creations of alternative realities, ones where the worlds of landscapes, human figures, architecture, objects, and natural phenomena are emphasized or subverted, revealed or obscured.
superreal features 70 works by artists such as ADAL, Tania Bruguera, Ana de la Cueva, Vik Muniz, Miguel Rio Branco, Betsabee Romero, Andres Serrano, and Teresa Serrano. These artists utilized their distinct working methods and viewpoints to challenge preconceived reality, and engage with their environments in both surreal and super-real ways that also subvert narrative forms.
The illusion of reality permeates in Las Hermanas Iglesias’, sisters Janelle and Lisa Iglesias, Nudes series. The artists wear knitted nude suits that mirror the same individual marks and scars on their own skin, and create self-portraits in dream-like environments of Tasmania. In Esteban Pastorino’s works, the photographer cloaks the pristine deco architecture of Francisco Salomone in a spooky darkness that hints to the history the facades conceal and mirror. Betsabee Romero transformed a 1955 Ford into an “Ayate car” to represent the experiences of Mexicans hoping for a better life in the United States.
The exterior floral patterning of the “Ayate car” and interior filled with dried roses goes beyond feminizing a traditionally masculine cultural icon by exposing the transitory and capricious nature of reality.