Spanning works across five decades, RicanVisions: Global Ancestralities and Embodied Futures is a Diasporican (pertaining to the Puerto Rican diaspora) reading of some of society’s most central challenges throughout the turn of the century. From racial violence, to climate change to the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibit tackles it all.
While the exhibit’s reach is expansive, its description is clear to note that its goal is not to showcase a comprehensive survey of Puerto Rican art within the last 50 years; rather, the exhibit captures “key moments of artistic development and creative practice” of Diasporican artists. The exhibit was launched in tandem with the Duke University Press publishing of the anthology, Nuyorican and Diasporican Visual Art edited by Dr. Arlene Dávila, and Dr. Yasmin Ramirez.
One of RicanVisions greatest strengths is its diverse material list. It features nearly everything from painting, collage, drawing, GIFs, sculpture, innovative photography methods and even an installation work. “A lot of the work that we as co-curators thought about was, ‘how can we make this a deviation or expansion of what already exist and is known to be Puerto Rican and Diasporican art in the United States?’” says one of the show’s three curators, Andrea Sofia Matos. They continue, “Our curatorial approach was researching what is already out there and what gaps can we fill.”
The exhibit consists of two floors and 51 artworks made by 19 living artists. The bottom floor is thematically curated as Global Ancestralities. Curator Xavier Robles Armas explains that the artists on this floor “are working and thinking alongside their community and they’re looking at their ancestral past, questioning it and investigating the ways colonial histories have impacted their upbringing across the diaspora.”
These themes are evident in Focus (1980) and Mgeni (1981), two steel sculptures by Jorge Luis Rodríguez in his Musical Box Series. With these works, Rodríguez centers the prevalence of percussion sounds in music throughout the African diaspora by creating artistic instruments that make percussion sounds when touched. Focus and Mgeni are avant-garde visual takes on the notes of Bomba, Plena Salsa and provoke viewers to think, ‘what does sound look like?’
Taking it a step further, Mgeni also hints at the often neglected African roots in Latinidad. Mgeni is a Swahili word that translates to foreigner or stranger. With this title choice, Rodríguez emphasizes feelings of aloofness Latinos may feel towards their African roots and asserts these roots as instrumental to the community’s cultural expression.
Just as much as this exhibit reckons with Diasporican lineages, it also offers points of reflection into the future. Orlando Estrada’s work Saturn (2024) imagines Earth hundreds of years after an apocalypse due to the environment’s degradation. The large structure is a face whose skin mimics Earth’s soil and an archaeological site with scattered signs of human life.
Arranged on top of the littered Earth-face is a village made from recycled boxes and packaging that is graced by a crescent moon. The moonlit village implies some kind of normalcy, community and hope despite the current looming reality of climate change.
The exhibit’s second floor is curated to the theme of Embodied Futures. “Artists are looking and feeling the landscape in their bodies as an orientation to the future…in being in tune with the body and one’s embodied practice of making art, one is able to amplify connections that can orient us into a decolonial future,” says Armas. This floor situates our bodies as earthly, holy and powerful vessels for storytelling about oppression and community.
Underscoring the vital connection between life and the body is the work of Juanita Lanzo. Lanzo’s collages Osamenta | Bones (2003-2004) and Untitled (2003-2004) are composed of hills of layered paper painted with microscopic hyper realistic views of cells. Lanzo was thinking about unethical human experiments on racialized bodies like the 1932 Tuskegee Syphilis Study and coercive state-sanctioned sterilization on women like “la operación” in Puerto Rico, 1960. Lanzo is forcing us to engage intimately with the body and these histories.
Recalling a time when all of our bodies were in a precarious state, some more than others, We in Water 2 (To swim in a Phosphorescent bay Illuminated by Movement) by Marina Gutierrez centers the COVID-19 pandemic. The large 32” x 62” drawing features the loved ones Gutierrez reminisced about during lockdown. The people are swirled with rising sea levels amongst a trickster character personifying COVID-19. However, it also features her loved ones engaged in creative acts like poetry and performance art and includes references to deities Yemaya, Oshun, angels and the Puerto Rican carnival character, El Vejigante. Through these references and more, Gutierrez holds space for the vulnerable state of many of us at this time and centers spiritualism and community as avenues through.
Community is a pillar of the show not just thematically, but in practice. The exhibit has provided over 35 guided tours with students of all ages and with several local organizations.
“RicanVisions is a very special exhibition. It’s not only a curatorial proposal but also a community making event at large,” emphasizes curator Ana Hilda Figueroa de Jesús.
RicanVisions is housed in the interdisciplinary arts, culture and scholarship center The Latinx Project at New York University. Artists featured in the exhibition are Manuel Acevedo, Armando Alleyne, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Vyczie Dorado, Orlando Estrada, Marina Gutierrez, Lee Jiménez, Juanita Lanzo, Miguel Enrique Lastra, Evelyn López de Guzmán, Jacoub Reyes, David Rios Ferreira, Shey ‘Ri Acu’ Rivera Ríos, Keysha Rivera, Jorge Luis Rodríguez, G. Rosa Rey, Angelina Ruiz, Tamara Torres, and Isaac Vazquez.
