Miguel Luciano, Pimp My Piragua, 2008-2009
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)
Miguel Luciano
With the sculpture Pimp My Piragua, Miguel Luciano celebrates the piragua, an icy treat sold in Puerto Rico and throughout the diaspora. Luciano’s mobile cart is a travelling party, with video, music, and lights. In performances, he serves piraguas to lucky onlookers, shaving ice from a big block and sweetening it with his own brightly colored syrups. In two large-scale paintings, Luciano also addresses the United States’ colonialist treatment of Puerto Rico and its people. Colorful imagery borrowed from vintage produce labels jostles with cartoon-like birds and bunnies representing the island. In Vulture Brand Yams, an American eagle—a symbol of U.S. dominance—is attacked by birds bearing machetes. In Barceloneta Bunnies, drugged and maimed bunnies cavort among references to the town of Barceloneta, formerly the site of a U.S. population control program. Barceloneta currently boasts the fifth largest pharmaceutical industry in the world, as aided by tax laws skewed towards foreign investment.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Miguel Luciano (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1972)
Lives and works in New York.
Miguel Luciano is a multimedia visual artist whose work explores themes of history, popular culture, social justice, and migration. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Mercosul Biennial (Brazil); El Museo Nacional de Bella Artes de la Habana (Cuba); The San Juan Poly-Graphic Triennial (PR); The Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award Grant and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award. His work is in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); The Brooklyn Museum (NY); El Museo del Barrio (NY); and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. He is currently an artist-in-residence within The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Civic Practice Partnership Residency Program.
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.
