Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the first half of this essay, American curator Dan Cameron considers the unexplored relationship between Puerto Rican-born artist Rigoberto Torres and American sculptor John Ahearn. In the past, the author declares, Torres’s artistry had been [...]

This essay, written by Lehman College Art Gallery director Susan Hoeltzel, was done on the occasion of the first mid-career retrospective of New York-based artist Rigoberto Torres. Well known to the public for his collaboration with artist John [...]

On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Caribbean Cultural Center, the executive director, Melody Capote, asserts the relevance of concluding the first quarter of a century of the institution with an exhibition of the work of visual [...]

In this essay, art historian Marimar Benitez applies Walter Benjamins’s concept of the “aura” of the work of art, and its reduction in the age of mechanical reproduction to the assumed role of the museum as a religious temple of art. Comparing [...]

This essay by curator Jeannette Ingberman analyzes ten years of work by Papo Colo in painting, sculpture, drawing, and performance. According to the author, Colo’s work explores the metaphysical and the spiritual, incorporating organic forms and [...]

In this conversation between Nuyorican artist Papo Colo, and feminist performance artist Martha Wilson, Colo describes his performances from 1976 to 1986 in chronological order. The conversation with her provides succinct descriptions of the [...]

Renowned art critic Lucy Lippard compares Papo Colo’s artistry to an island like his native Puerto Rico that is also striving for independence. Trying to relate Colo’s painting style to what had become the shadow term of “expressionism,” she [...]

In this essay, curator and scholar Henry C. Estrada argues that despite the fact that Latinos are a heterogeneous cultural group, they share a history of colonialism, geographic displacement, internal exile, and racial discrimination. The experience [...]

Written by Syeus Mottel, a theater and film director, and a photographer, this essay describes how the community action group, called CHARAS, originated, and how its members worked together to build the first geodesic domes in the Lower East Side of [...]

In this “Author’s Note,” Syeus Mottel, a theater and film director, and a photographer, describes his experience after he was recruited to make a book adaptation of a unique project already in development by Buckminster Fuller and Michael Ben [...]

In this essay, Yasmin Ramírez argues that among the parallel conditions of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans in the United States was a solidarity that took shape during the era of World War II, when floods of new arrivals—coming from Mexico, under the [...]

In this essay, Yasmin Ramírez argues that among the parallel conditions of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans in the United States was a solidarity that took shape during the era of World War II, when floods of new arrivals—coming from Mexico, under the [...]

In this essay, curator and scholar Henry C. Estrada argues that despite the fact that Latinos are a heterogeneous cultural group, they share a history of colonialism, geographic displacement, internal exile, and racial discrimination. The experience [...]

In this essay, art historian Marimar Benitez applies Walter Benjamins’s concept of the “aura” of the work of art, and its reduction in the age of mechanical reproduction to the assumed role of the museum as a religious temple of art. Comparing [...]

This open statement written by New York-born Puerto Rican poet, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, is addressed to writers, painters, musicians, and artists saying that although they have dedicated their lives to the creation of art forms that sustain [...]

Puerto Rican artist Antonio Martorell offers a poetic essay that starts by explaining the use of the “Y” in the spelling of Islands: Art in Transit/Yslas: Arte en tránsito, an exhibition held in 1994. Y translates in Spanish as “and,” which [...]

In this introductory essay to the exhibition catalogue of Islands: Art in Transit/Yslas: Arte en tránsito, the main question artist Domingo García asks and tries to decipher is how successfully Puerto Rican art has adapted to metropolitan art forms [...]

The author, Joshua Kind, contends that Ferrer may be included in the category of contemporary artists interested in naïve style forms. In assemblage art, which is often deliberately amorphous, such qualities as the artist’s qualms are hidden from [...]

This interview between fellow Puerto Ricans Félix Joaquín Rivera and Pepón Osorio was conducted while walking through the street markets of Bayamon’s historical center, one of the metropolitan municipalities of Puerto Rico close to San Juan. [...]

In this wide-ranging interview conducted by Michael Flanagan and Joshua Kind with Rafael Ferrer, the artist starts by discussing how he made the transition from being a percussionist to exploring the visual arts. Ferrer purposefully did not seek any [...]

This essay, written by curator Deborah Cullen, offers an account of how El Museo del Barrio was founded out of the drive to establish a creative nexus for Puerto Rican artists who exist between the mainland United States and the Caribbean island. [...]

Joseph Jacobs, curator of painting and sculpture at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, gives an account of the opening day of Badge of Honor, an installation by Puerto Rican artist Pepon Osorio, in June 1995, by giving a description of the types of [...]

This essay, written by curator Deborah Cullen, offers an account of how El Museo del Barrio was founded out of the drive to establish a creative nexus for Puerto Rican artists who exist between the mainland United States and the Caribbean island. [...]

In this 1972 essay, R. Buckminster Fuller presciently describes a new era of communication systems in which all humanity can learn enough about productivity as well as the generalized principles of nature that render abject poverty, and the have-nots [...]

Architect and urban planner, Luis Aponte-Pares, discusses the trends of cities across the nation that have become contested terrains due to the transformation of the urban landscape: from suburbanization to the class and ethnic segregation of [...]

This thirteen-point program, written in English, presents the Young Lords Party platform calling for the liberation of all oppressed people. Some of the points that stand out from the list, include a call for the self-determination of Puerto Ricans, [...]

This thirteen-point program, written in Spanish, presents the Young Lords Party platform calling for the liberation of all oppressed people. Some of the points that stand out from the list, include a call for the self-determination of Puerto Ricans, [...]

The brochure for de puerta en puerta (door to door), an exhibition curated by Silvia Carman Cubiña of installations by Puerto Rican-born, New York-based artist Pepon Osorio included a biography, a short description of the exhibition, and a write up [...]

At the beginning of the year 2000, Exit Art celebrated its eighteenth anniversary with The End: An Independent Vision of Contemporary Culture, 1982–2000, an exhibition of historical documentation from more than other ninety exhibitions, performance [...]

This essay for the catalogue Impassioned Rhythms, written by Kim Levin for a retrospective exhibition of work by Rafael Ferrer, encompasses the diverse creative impulses behind this Puerto Rican-born artist. She examines his immersion in Process art [...]

In the introductory essay to The Hybrid State Films, a survey of independent films and videos, Cuban-American art scholar and curator of the show, Coco Fusco, states that she is critical of the foundational approach of multiculturalism that [...]

Dr. Marta Moreno Vega’s editorial statement for the first issue of Caribe magazine lays out the aims and goals of the new publication. She states that Caribe will focus on Caribbean subjects that have been misinterpreted by colonizing powers. [...]

On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Caribbean Cultural Center, Melody Capote, the executive director, states the pertinence of concluding the first twenty-five years of the institution with the work of visual artist Manuel Vega. [...]

In this essay, art historian Robert Farris Thompson provides a narrative of Manuel Vega’s biography and art. Vega, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, grew up in the tough streets of the Bronx. In his early years, Vega gravitated toward diverse [...]

This catalogue for the 1980 exhibition, Comadres: A Collective Environmental Exhibit by Ten Women Artists, wasdesigned as a folder containing loose sheets of handwritten minutes taken throughout the different meetings in preparation of the [...]

In this bilingual essay, David R. White, the director and executive producer of the Dance Theater Workshop, traces Pepón Osorio’s syncretism of aesthetic genres through his collaborative practices with either performance artists or dancers. In [...]

Art historian and curator Kellie Jones states that critics, both modern and postmodern, have continually identified fragmentation, layering, meeting, and/or the combination of meanings as the elements that have characterized the twentieth-century [...]

In the curatorial statement by Susana Torruella Leval in the 1991 exhibition, Con To’ Los Hierros: A Retrospective of the Work of Pepón Osorio [Armed to the Teeth: A Retrospective of the Work of Pepón Osorio],she breaks down the artist’s [...]

This essay assembles a genealogy of avant-garde—yet socially committed—interventionist art practices that took place in the South Bronx starting in the 1960s New York City. The essay, written by curator Betti-Sue Hertz, examines how artists have [...]

C. Daniel Dawson, a curator and scholar of African diaspora in arts and culture, writes of first meeting artist Manuel Vega on a trip to Bahia (Brazil) in 1984, where he witnessed his wondrous ability as a dancer. Dawson argues that this is an [...]

In this essay, independent curator Berta M. Sichel explores Pepon Osorio’s proclivity toward excess, which she deems a “surprise” within the context of contemporary Latino art. A Puerto Rican living in New York City, Osorio has not experimented [...]