Wall mural ARS LONGA VITA BREVIS by Alexis Bousquet, calle Cerra in Santurce arts district
by Jan Galligan
Santa Olaya, PR
May 18, 2022
Checking our archive of articles we've written about art here on the island since our first in the summer of 2011, we find that the most recent dates from November 2021, although it concerns art installed by Allora & Calzadilla in a cave on the southwest coast in 2015. Our most current article detailing work seen in galleries in the Santurce art district was published in April 2019. We knew it had been a long time since we had gotten out to look at art and organize our opinions, we just did not realize it had been that long, and we began to get a sense of the toll that Covid has wrought since the beginning of 2020.
While there were not the outward signs
of physical devastation seen in 2017 after hurricane Maria, Covid
occured around the time the island was beginning to emerge from
the effects of that storm. Galleries and art spaces had
closed, artists had left the island temporarily or long term, and the
repercussions were still being felt. Art activity had slowed
dramatically, and then came Covid.
Speaking personally, we experienced an
especially devastating effect of the pandemic in the loss of three
important artists with whom we shared a kinship: Adal Maldonado,
Elizam Escobar, and Esteban Valdes all of whom died in 2020. Covid,
played a part, and their passing has left a large hole in the current
art community. Thankfully their work lives on, and our memories of
each artist is intact.
This past weekend, emerging from a
lengthy forced isolation, we found galleries, museums and art spaces
again presenting exhibitions, and people have begun returning,
however warily, to explore what is on display. Lillian and I were
joined by two friends, Betty and Nerieda as we took a brief tour of the
galleries km 0.2 and Galeria Agustina Ferreyra both in Santurce.
km 0.2 a non-profit space since 2015,
is located on the second floor at 619 calle Cerra and run by artists
Karlo Andrei Ibarra and Yiyo Tirado Rivera. Their mission statement
says: “Our vision is to expand links and collaborations with other
independent art projects in the Caribbean and Latin America,
focusing on the production of contemporary artistic practices, while
expanding the visibility of art practice in Puerto Rico.”
Agustina Ferreyra's gallery, in operation since 2013, was especially affected by hurricane Maria. Forced to close, she moved to Mexico City, continuing her operations there until this past year when she returned to San Juan and reopened in an expanded, elegant new space at 1412 Avenida Fernández Juncos. Our first visit to the gallery was to see her second exhibition. The first featured Cuban artist Dalton Gata who presented eight large paintings and one very large sculpture. You can view that exhibition here.
Argentine artist Tobias Dirty was born
in 1990 and presented his first exhibition in Buenos Aires in 2017.
His inaugural exhibition here, Siempre estoy dado vuelta (I am
always upside down) includes four large paintings, several small
sized canvases and a large wooden rocking chair with a bright yellow
papier-mache bust resting on the seat. Three small, similarly made
sculptures are displayed on wooden boxes mounted at eye level on the
wall, much as you would hang a painting. The subject of these works
is the house and its various parts, about which Dirty says: “No
matter how safe the house, all the doors have a peephole, just in
case, as a precaution. Meanwhile the nose is close to the gas pipes
to detect a leak. The floors are my hands, which support me by being
the ceiling, because I am turned upside down, I am always upside
down, pointing to the stars.” We did our best to stay upright while
viewing this work.
We were drawn to km 0.2, located nearby, in order to acquire a t-shirt produced in memory of artist Esteban Valdes. Printed in white, on a black shirt is his neologism from the 1970s, PUERTO RICO PARA LOS PUERTORRISUENOS, which we interpret as "Puerto Rico for those who dream". Here, the shirt serves as a slogan for this exhibition of twenty-four works by eighteen artists. Titled GO HOME, it casts a wry but wary eye on what has long been condemned as imperialist practices, first by the Spanish conquistadors and then the USA, which acquired the island as a spoil in 1898 at the end of the Spanish-American war. Having now suffered over 500 years of colonialism, Puerto Rico, labeled a territory, remains subserviant to the aims and whims of the US government. As the (translated) gallery brochure states, “GO HOME is a multigenerational group of artists whose attitude lies in their radicalization of content and in a total repudiation of colonial laws that merely grant us the freedom to sell our country and our homeland to the highest bidder. In short, this exhibit is a banner of resistance.”
While feeling solidarity with this position, it was difficult not to feel implicated by the explicit message of some of the works. “We thought we were home,” we mused, taking some small comfort in realizing that many of these works are aimed at the practices of tourists and weekend visitors. For instance, the painting by Saki Sacarello shows a couple of female tourists walking down the street. A local asks, “Why are you here wearing loincloths?” The tourists reply, “Oh no, not us, we are your compatriots.” Well, at least we're not tourists, we ruminated.
Another anti-salubrious view of the tourist is presented in Aaron Salabarrias Valle's mini-sculpture titled Turistas-5, mounted on the wall on a small shelf in front of a bright yellow sun. “Don't get burnt,” we thought. Finally we were met with two framed photographs by Ricardo Alcaraz made during the aggressive protests that began in 1999 against the US Navy on Vieques, the small sister island to the southeast of the main island. This resulted in the expulsion of the Navy in 2003. One photograph titled Pescadores viequenses durante una manifestacion de desobediencia civil en contra de la presencia en Vieques de la Marina de Guerra estadounidense. La protesta se llevaba a cabo en una de las playas que usaba la Marina para sus practicas de guerra. Al fondo pasa un buque de guerra de la Marina, depicts two protesting local fishermen on their boat blocking off a Navy destroyer in the background from entering the area where they normally fish. The other photo, Grafitti que hizo Tito Kayak en un buque de la Marina en el area de los muelles en San Juan, durante una protesta que se llevaba a cabo, shows the US Navy ship Yorktown with the phrase BIEQUE O MUERTE (Vieques or Death) spray painted by Tito Kayak on the ship's rear quarter. Taped to the wall just below each 16 x 20 framed photo, is the same picture as a 4x6 postcard, the type a tourist might normally buy at a local CVS.
It was an interesting afternoon, back on the street, looking at art, and we went home talking and thinking about what we had seen, while looking forward to the next opportunity to see more art, and maybe, get lunch and a beer.
THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED
PRUFROCK
T.S. Eliot, 1915
Non torno vivo alcun,
s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia
ti rispondo.
(If I don't come back
alive, I hear the truth,
Without fear of infamy,
I will answer you.)
Let us go then, you and I,
And sawdust restaurants
with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a
tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an
overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is
it?”
Let us go and make our
visit.
In the room the women come
and go
Speaking of Michelangelo.