(Re)knowing the Future

Acknowledging the past as a vast source of energy, the exhibited works reflect on the missteps of our history while also reiterating the multiple social capitals we have.

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

Curated by Marianne Ramírez Aponte

(Re)knowing the Future María E. Somoza Exhibition Hall (2022-06-26)Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

(Re)knowing the future highlights art’s ability to diagnose and open up possibilities for understanding our reality.

(Re)knowing the Future Julio Rosado del Valle Exhibition Hall (2022-06-26)Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

The dialogue proposed by this selection of works from the Museum's collection made by Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American artists spanning several generations, allows for a contrasted, multicultural, and multi-temporal analysis of some of the world’s most pressing issues.

Public School Teachers Protesting in Front of the Capitol Building (1980) by Jack DelanoMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

This analysis is enriched by a selection of photographs by the Ukrainian-born Puerto Rican artist, Jack Delano (Kyiv, 1914—San Juan, 1997).

Striking sugarcane workers at a meeting in Yabucoa (1941) by Jack DelanoMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

We pay tribute to his legacy as an outstanding documentarian of Puerto Rican reality for more than five decades, and as a gesture of solidarity with the Ukrainian people following the Russian invasion of February 2022.

Seen in counterpoint to Delano's works, the pieces in the Museum’s collection give an account of the profound transformations, both social and of our landscape, that Puerto Rico has undergone; transformations marked by a colonial lineage from which we have not been able to detach ourselves.

(Re)knowing the Future Julio Rosado del Valle Exhibition Hall (2022-06-26)Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

The dialogue between artists from different geographies also facilitates reflections that transcend insular limits on topics such as the role of the human being in the effective destruction of the planet; ...

(Re)knowing the Future Julio Rosado del Valle Exhibition Hall (2022-06-26)Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

...the efficacy of political governance and economic development models; the desire for social justice in the areas of employment, education, health, housing and land ownership; and the ethical implications of scientific and technological work.

Serpent River Book (2017) by Carolina CaycedoMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

In Carolina Caycedo’s Serpent River Book, the visible face of the book shows images and texts in five sections that encompass indigenous understandings of rivers; relation and equilibrium within the river; the colonial, corporate and neo-colonial relationship to the river.

Finally, the book presents the people who are affected by the corporate understanding of the common goods, and how they resist. The book guides us
in an exploration of the maps, photos and struggles that connect us.

For Chile (1/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

Elías Adasme's A Chile is a polyptych of five panels recording interventions produced in the midst of the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who seized power from the democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973 and ruled Chile until 1990.

For Chile (4/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

For the artist, the naked body can be read as a violated body, which, tortured and mistreated, becomes a metaphor for the country; a product of the dictatorship. But it is also meant to convey a message of hope, that the country will recover and emerge from its current state

The exhibition also highlights the impact of history and ancestral cultures in the formation of our identity, and the close relationship between art and activism, and its correspondence with the growing atmosphere of confrontation and ideological polarization that characterizes our time.

(Re)knowing the Future María E. Somoza Exhibition Hall (2022-06-26)Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

Discipline by Natalia Ortega Gámez is based on her research and her work on artisanal production in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, to develop a piece that integrates the whip as a multi-use domestic object, both fly killer and object of desire.

The piece is part of a series of the same name that touches on themes of power and submission; about the punished and the punisher; in that being from the Caribbean means constantly feeling whipped.

Thirty Years in One Day (2021) by Ada del PilarMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

In Thirty Years in One Day, Ada del Pilar shows the creation of an archetype of a house in the Juana Matos community in Cataño, Puerto Rico. The house is a metaphor, a body that conditions memory, that carries an individual and, in turn, collective imagination.

Given the historical context of the Juana Matos community, this installation intends to present a domestic space that monopolizes the temporary fabric of the community background. Thirty Years in One Day is a return to the origin.

(Re)knowing the Future Julio Rosado del Valle Exhibition Hall (2022-06-26)Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico

Acknowledging the past as a vast source of energy, the exhibited works reflect on the missteps of our history while also reiterating the multiple social capitals we have, and our capacity to, guided by experience, determine the society we want to inhabit in the future.

Credits: Story

This exhibition has been possible thanks to support from Comisión Especial Conjunta de Fondos Legislativos para Impacto Comunitario, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades, National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon Foundation, Banco Popular y Liberty Business

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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