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28/10/2004

Island Nations

RISD Museum of Art, Providence

New Art from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Diaspora

PROVIDENCE, RI The image of a secluded, tropical paradise is deeply ingrained in foreign conceptions of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design confronts this stubborn stereotype in Island Nations: New Art from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico & the Diaspora. The exhibition features contemporary works by 23 invited artists, plus several pieces from the Museum s Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Modern Latin American Art.

These artists present some of the most dynamic and challenging artwork currently being made anywhere, despite general under-representation at international art venues. Island Nations which includes multimedia installations, video, sculpture, photography and painting aims to dispel the impression that art from this region is limited to folk styles and traditions. It is the first exhibition outside of the Caribbean to focus on these three nations together.

Judith Tannenbaum, the Museum s Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art, and Ren Morales, Curatorial Assistant, traveled to Havana, Cuba; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to meet with artists in their homes and studios. The curators gained direct insight into the artists working processes, and were exposed to the complex situations facing them in these cities.

According to Morales, The participating artists were selected through an organic process based on their aesthetic achievements; the themes that anchor the exhibition arose naturally both from individual works and from the grouping, congealing around points like the challenges of living amid these paradises, the facts and fictions of insularity, and symbolic transformations of architecture.

While raising issues that are universally relevant, many of the artists in the exhibition address concerns that are bound to conditions specific to their homelands. Esterio Segura, Glenda Len and Abel Oliva critique aspects of the socialist revolution that has had such a profound impact on their lives in Cuba. For instance, Segura s Bocinas (Speakers) a steel birdcage filled with dismantled stereo speakers is a metaphor for the censorship that Cuban artists and citizens endure under the current regime.

Tony Capelln and Raquel Paiewonsky use materials gathered from their immediate surroundings in ways that directly or indirectly create portraits of daily life in the Dominican Republic. From a distance, Capelln s Mar Caribe (Caribbean Sea) invokes the colors of the Caribbean waters in a grid of bright blue flip-flops, which washed up from the river that runs through an impoverished area of Santo Domingo. Up close, the sandals here, intimate artifacts of the tropical urban poor become symbols of social pain, their rubber toe straps replaced with barbed wire.

Artists like Allora & Calzadilla, Charles Juhsz-Alvarado and Chemi Rosado Seijo analyze issues such as Puerto Rico s ambiguous relationship with the United States, the Puerto Rican diaspora and economic underdevelopment in San Juan. In Land Mark (footprints) [Terreno Marcado (huellas)], Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla enlisted protestors at Vieques, the former U.S. Navy weapons test site that stood for many years as a bitter reminder of Puerto Rico s status as a territory of the United States. Customdesigned soles carved with subversive slogans and images were added to the protestors shoes; the beach on which they demonstrated thus became branded with their visions for the land reclamation campaign, as it had been branded by American bombs.

Emigration has extended the Spanish-speaking Caribbean far beyond its geographical borders. In order to reflect and serve the strong Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican communities in the United States, the exhibition also includes work by artist-migrs. For some, their birthplace does not always play an explicit part in their work. In other cases, it serves as a springboard for meditations on identity and belonging. Island Nations presents the great variety of perspectives resulting from the cultural displacement and reconstitution of artists living outside their native lands.

Island Nations complements and updates The RISD Museum s Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Modern Latin American Art, among the most important of such holdings in the United States, says Tannenbaum. Established in 1964, when few European and North American institutions considered the significance of Latin American cultural production at all, this collection led to a number of distinctive acquisitions from the 1960s and 1970s, with additions continuing through the 1980s and 1990s. The RISD Museum has amassed a large group of work in all media, featuring major pieces by such early 20th-century figures as Diego Rivera, Roberto Matta Echaurren, Wifredo Lam and Joaqun Torres-Garca. Other artists represented in the Nancy Sayles Day Collection include Fernando Botero, Gunther Gerzso, Jess Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Dez, Rafael Ferrer, Arnaldo Roche-Rabell, Jos Bedia and Ana Mendieta.

Island Nations celebrates the remarkable work being produced in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and by Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican migrs. The exhibition provides viewers a singular opportunity to examine works never seen before by artists well deserving of international recognition, alongside works from the Museum s collection of art from Latin America. In so doing, it presents edifying and provocative insight into the modern-day culture and politics of these three island nations. The exhibition will be accompanied by film screenings, lectures, a symposium, and other special programs and educational activities. A catalogue published by the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, accompanies the exhibition.

About the Museum
A world-class museum in Providence, RI, The RISD Museum of Art was founded as part of Rhode Island School of Design in 1877. Its permanent collection of nearly 80,000 objects includes paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, costume, furniture and other works of art from every part of the world, including pieces from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and art of all periods from Asia, Europe and the Americas, up to the latest in contemporary art. In addition, the Museum offers a wide array of educational and public programs.

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; third Thursday of the month until 9 p.m. Admission: $8 for

exhibition sponsors: Cardi’s Furniture, NBC 10, Providence Phoenix, Providence Tourism Council

additional support: Horton Interpreting Services, Inc., Providence; Dunkin’ Donuts, Providence; JetBlue Airways, New York; Face to Face Media, LLC, New York; Cuban Artists Fund, New York

The generosity of Letitia and John Carter, and The Carter Fund for Museum Education provide significant ongoing support for outreach programs at The RISD Museum.

The RISD Museum
224 Benefit Street
Providence, RI 02903

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