Constant Storm: Art from Puerto Rico and the Diaspora
September 24 – December 4, 2021
USF Contemporary Art Museum + Online
HOURS: Monday-Friday 10am – 5pm; Thursday 10am–8pm; Saturday 1-4pm; Closed Sundays and USF Holidays (November 11, 25, 26, 27). Visitors to the museum are expected to wear masks and practice social distancing.
Constant Storm: Art From Puerto Rico and the Diaspora will gather, display, record, and conceptualize artistic responses to Hurricane Maria by artists from Puerto Rico and the diaspora. Through artworks and their narratives and socially engaged initiatives, voices from the island and Puerto Rican communities in New York and Florida will materialize a synoptic view of Puerto Rico’s fragile recovery as part of an evolving, 121-year-old historical crisis.
Participating artists include: Rogelio Báez Vega, Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Jorge González Santos, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, Ivelisse Jiménez, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Miguel Luciano, SkittLeZ-Ortiz, Angel Otero, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, Gabriel Ramos, Jezabeth Roca González, Gamaliel Rodríguez, Yiyo Tirado Rivera.
Curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, CAM Curator at Large, and Noel Smith, Former Deputy Director and Curator of Latin American and Caribbean Art: organized by USF Contemporary Art Museum
ONLINE EXHIBITION
Exhibition Home // Curatorial Essay | Ensayo Curatorial // Acknowledgements and Foreword | Agradecimientos y Prólogo // Rogelio Báez Vega (EN) | Rogelio Báez Vega (ES) // Jorge González Santos (EN) | Jorge González Santos (ES) // Karlo Andrei Ibarra (EN) | Karlo Andrei Ibarra (ES) // Ivelisse Jiménez (EN) | Ivelisse Jiménez (ES) // Miguel Luciano (EN) | Miguel Luciano (ES) // Natalia Lassalle-Morillo & Sofía Gallisá Muriente (EN) | Natalia Lassalle-Morillo & Sofía Gallisá Muriente (ES) // Angel Otero (EN) | Angel Otero (ES) // Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz (EN) | Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz (ES) // Gabriel Ramos (EN) | Gabriel Ramos (ES) // Jezabeth Roca González (EN) | Jezabeth Roca González (ES) // Gamaliel Rodríguez (EN) | Gamaliel Rodríguez (ES) // Yiyo Tirado Rivera (EN) | Yiyo Tirado Rivera (ES)
Jorge González Santos
Jorge González Santos is interested in producing new narratives between the indigenous and the modern—between the Pre-Columbian Taino culture of the Boricua and the western culture imposed on the archipelago by European colonization. In his installation Toali (Aiba Buya), González Santos explores how land is acknowledged and commemorated through artistic practice. Two drawings represent Taino images associated with crops, sowed fields, and plant spirits: a zemi, or carved stone head, as well as a pattern for weaving. These drawings are accompanied by agricultural tools the artist himself created from indigenous materials: a garabato (a forked stick used for grasping), an escobilla (a broom for clearing paths) and a coa (a polished wooden stick used to plow and sow). By layering ancient and modern imagery and materials, he brings into focus the simultaneous presence of the past and the present, pivotal to understanding the history and cultural diversity of the Caribbean.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jorge González Santos (Puerto Rico, 1981)
Lives and works in San Juan.
Jorge González’s recent work serves as a platform for the recuperation of marginalized vernacular material culture, but also as a continuous attempt to produce new narratives between the indigenous and the modern. Jorge González is a 2012 participant in La Práctica, the nine-month residency program at Beta-Local (San Juan) and has since worked with that institution to create pedagogical connections with the university system in Puerto Rico. He has shown his work internationally, including at the International Studio Curatorial Program (New York); Arte Rio; SITELines 2016 Santa Fe Biennial; Davidoff Residency Program in the Flora Ars & Natura Program (Bogotá); Under the Mango Tree: Ulterior Sites of Learning, organized by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, documenta 14 (Kassel); and Una Cierta Investigación sobre las Imágenes, Tenerife Espacio para las Artes.
Constant Storm: Art from Puerto Rico and the Diaspora is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and supported by the Tampa Bay Rays and the Tampa Bay Rowdies. The symposium Bregando with Disasters: Post Hurricane Maria Realities and Resiliencies is supported by a Humanities Centers Grant from Florida Humanities. The USF Contemporary Art Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
