Sarah Zapata: Siempre X
As part of its ongoing ARTE NUEVO series, El Museo del Barrio invites artists to propose unique, site-specific works for its large wall in El Café. In this case, sculptor and textile artist Sarah Zapata spent several weeks in Peru studying indigenous textile design and techniques, which she incorporated into this large work. The artist is interested in the intersection of popular and traditional cultures as well as in a mix of natural and fabricated materials. She has also been deeply inspired by ariplleras, hand-sewn narrative works that were made in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship and also throughout the guerilla occupation in Peru. Made almost exclusively by women, these were an important political tool, sometimes the only way that information about the violence and repression could be disseminated to other countries. The artist adapts these hand-made techniques and ideas to a monumental scale and incorporates plastic elements that are reminiscent of pop culture imagery.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OFFICE HOURS (OH)
“Office Hours (OH)” comprises a series of actions spread throughout El Museo del Barrio’s facilities, for which artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez invites the various departments of the organization to operate on a horizontal level within its own exhibition space. Estévez works with El Museo del Barrio’s employees to co-generate proposals for interventions, workshops, and celebrations, through which both staff and visitors can come together to experience the museum from each other’s perspectives and hence to re-shape its day-to-day as a collaborative endeavor.
“OH” brings face to face the concepts of creativity versus productivity, as El Museo del Barrio’s curators, administrators, guards, educators, operations personnel, finance employees, audiences, and artists are encouraged to work as play or to play as work – all of this as part of an the on-going performing of the day-to-day. “OH” conceives of El Museo as a holistic work of art; that is, a living artwork existing beyond the boundaries of the exhibition space and comingling with life.
An evolving project, OH currently encompasses the following actions: En Familia; Friends of Friends; Over the Table; El Museo as Classroom; Back in Five Minutes; and Creative Disruptions.
To see full project, please click here.
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.
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.
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.
Caribbean: Crossroads of the World
The exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is the culmination of nearly a decade of collaborative research and scholarship organized by El Museo del Barrio in conjunction with the Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Presenting work at the three museums and accompanied by an ambitious range of programs and events, Caribbean: Crossroads offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore the diverse and impactful cultural history of the Caribbean basin and its diaspora. More than 500 works of art spanning four centuries illuminate changing aesthetics and ideologies and provoke meaningful conversations about topics ranging from commerce and cultural hybridity to politics and pop culture.
Counterpoints reflects on the economic developments of the Caribbean, focusing on the shift from plantation systems and commodities such as sugar, tobacco, and banana to the energy and tourism industries, which have had tremendous aesthetic and social impact while proving to be a source of wealth and conflict. Patriot Acts studies the central role that creole culture and notions of hybridity, supported by newly empowered local economic forces, play in the configuration of national and regional discourses of identity, and how artists and intellectuals often pitted traditional, academic aesthetics against the “authentic,” indigenous and African heritages of the Caribbean.
Fluid Motions examines the complexities of the geographical and geopolitical realities of a region made up of islands and coastal areas, connected and separated by bodies of water, where human and natural forces collide, and commercial routes has often camouflaged foreign imperial ambitions. Kingdoms of this World considers the amazing variety of visual systems, languages, cultures and religions that co-exist in the Caribbean, and their role in the development of popular traditions such as syncretic religions, popular music genres, newly created languages, and the carnival.
Shades of History explores the significance of race and its relevance to the history and visual culture of the Caribbean, beginning with the pivotal moment of the Haitian Revolution in 1791. Race is analyzed as a trigger for discussions on human rights, social status, national identity, and beauty. Land of the Outlaw addresses the dual images of the Caribbean as a Utopian place of pleasure and a land of deviance and illicit activity, and how they intertwine in a myriad foundational myths and mediatic stereotypes (from pirates and zombies to dictators and drug smugglers) that are now part of global popular culture.
This landmark project has been over seven years in the making. Research visits and meetings with scholars from all over the Gran Caríbe region have been essential to establishing its scope and themes. The resulting intellectual exchange of culture, artistry, and vision will illuminate the Caribbean region like never before.
PROJECT TEAM
PROJECT DIRECTOR Elvis Fuentes, Curator of Special Projects for El Museo del Barrio
CURATORIAL TEAM Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor, Professor of Art History, lnstitute of Fine Arts, New York University Lowery Stokes Sims, Curator, Museum of Arts and Design, NY Gerald Alexis, Scholar of the lnstitut Canadien de Quebec, and former Minister of Culture in Haiti Yolanda Wood Pujols, Director of the Center for Caribbean Studies, Casa de las Americas, Havana, and Professor of Art History at the School of Arts and Letters, University of Havana.
INSTITUTIONAL CURATORS Deborah Cullen, Director of Curatorial Programs and Exhibitions at El Museo del Barrio Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, Curator at El Museo del Barrio Hitomi lwasaki, Director of Exhibitions at the Queens Museum of Art Naima J. Keith, Assistant Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem
PUBLICATION
A major accompanying publication, Caribbean: Art at the Crossroads of the World, will serve as a resource for the study of early modern and contemporary Caribbean history, art, and culture. Edited by Deborah Cullen and Elvis Fuentes and co-published by Yale University Press, it features texts by leading scholars, curators, artists and public intellectuals. CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Gerald Alexis, Author of Haitian Painters, former Minister of Culture in Haiti Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, PhD, Curator, El Museo del Barrio Maryse Condé, PhD, Author and Professor Emeritus of French at Columbia University Deborah Cullen, PhD, Director of Curatorial Programs, El Museo del Barrio Elvis Fuentes, Associate Curator for Special Projects, El Museo del Barrio and Caribbean: Crossroads of the World Project Director Hitomi Iwasaki, Director of Exhibitions, Queens Museum of Art, with Herb Tam, Director of Exhibitions, Museum of Chinese in America Katherine Manthorne, PhD, Deputy Executive Officer and Professor, City University of New York Graduate Center Alvaro Medina, Art Historian and Curator, Institute of Aesthetic Research, National University of Colombia Veerle Poupeye, Director, National Gallery of Jamaica Sally and Richard Price, PhDs, Social anthropologists Sergio Ramírez Mercado, Writer, intellectual, and former Vice President of Nicaragua Jennifer Smit, Art Historian and curator, Curaçao; Lowery Stokes Sims, PhD, Curator, Museum of Arts and Design Edward J. Sullivan, PhD, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor, Professor of Art History, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Krista Thompson, PhD, Associate Professor at University of Chicago Yolanda Wood Pujols, Director of the Center for Caribbean Studies, Casa de las Americas, Havana, and Professor of Art History at the School of Arts and Letters, University of Havana
Also included are texts by Alston Barrington Chevannes, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Ramón Emeterio Betances, David Boxer, Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott.The publication is on sale at the gift shops of El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art, and The Studio Museum in Harlem.
SYMPOSIUM
In conjunction with the exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, El Museo del Barrio, the Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem presented a three-day symposium bringing together scholars and practitioners from across the Caribbean and its diaspora.
Presenting Sponsor is MetLife Foundation. Leadership Support provided by FORD FOUNDATION. Major Support provided by The Reed Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment of the Arts; Agnes Gund; Bacardi USA; Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam; Christie’s, Inc.; Maduro & Curiel’s Bank N.V.; Tony Bechara; Ramón and Nercys Cernuda; The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation; Dr. Blas A. Reyes; Jacqueline L. Curiel; Susan R. Delvalle; Elena de Murias; Benjamin Ortiz; and Victor Torchia, Jr.
The exhibition publication is supported by The Dedalus Foundation and Patricia & Howard Farber Foundation. The exhibition and related programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; Speaker Christine Quinn and the New York City Council; Institut Français; the Netherlands Cultural Services; and the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.
NYC & Company is the lead media partner for this exhibition. Additional media sponsorship is provided by Cablevision; MTA NYC Transit; WABC-TV; and WXTV Univision 41. Special thanks to ARC Magazine; Art Experience: New York City; Bomb; Christie’s, Inc.; Flavorpill; and Urban Latino for their additional media support.