The Moment of the Yagrumo

This group of artists shares interests in a growing appreciation and study of the vernacular and approaches art from regenerative practices, the use of natural materials and local production and consumption towards a true emancipation. Others use technology and its ways of representing nature to reflect on the social and cultural effects of our exploration of the world and the universe.

These artistic practices account for the paradigm shift observed in the wider art world, in which spaces have been created for important historical reviews and renewed interest in artists and fields usually considered outside the canon of art. There is other knowledge that it is urgent to recover for greater dissemination as part of the decolonization strategies that we can put into practice.

Guillermo E. Rodríguez
San Juan, Puerto Rico 1986

Untitled (Captiva 1)
Untitled (Captiva 2)
Untitled (Captiva 3)
from the series Doppler Landscapes, 2019
Silkscreen on acetate
42 x 42" each
Courtesy of the artist

Seen next to Serpent River Book & Serpent Table by Carolina Caycedo, we can think about the technology that made these images possible, as well as the atmospheric impact that all our actions have on the planet.

Guillermo E. Rodríguez
San Juan, Puerto Rico 1986

Untitled (Jungle Road Rainbow), from the series Doppler Landscapes, 2019
Silkscreen on lined paper
48 x 48”
Courtesy of the artist

Serpent River Book & Serpent Table is an installation that incorporates an artist’s book that is part of a wider body of work called Be Damned. Developed over the past decade, Be Damned looks into how infrastructures developed to contain rivers, such as dams and channels, affect bodies of water as well as social bodies. Indigenous codexes from the Americas and maps of the Berlin Wall both served as inspiration in the development of the book, which contains images on one side and archival texts, poems and other texts written by the artist on the other.

The book is divided into five chapters that encompass indigenous understandings of rivers; relation and equilibrium within the river; the colonial, corporate and neo-colonial relationship to the river; and the consequences of that exploitation, especially when it gets out of control. Finally, the book presents the people who are affected by the corporate understanding of the common goods, and how they resist. Constructed to evoke the shape of a river, the installation guides us in an exploration of the maps, photos and struggles that connect us.

Silat is the result of ongoing collaborations between Grupo Thañí, an organized group of Wichí female weavers from Salta, a province in northern Argentina, and Guido Yannitto, who is also from Salta. Grupo Thañí emerged in 2015 because of community demands and an effort by government authorities and allies to incentivize economies around artisanal practices, foster innovative techniques, designs and textile uses, as well as to empower women in Wichí communities who are the carriers of these traditions to receive a fair wage.

This particular art work emerged out of exchanges between Yannitto and the weavers, who discussed themes and references to include in the final textile piece. The main theme is water, whether it be through the hydrographic map at the center of the textile, or the many creatures that belong in and around surrounding rivers, such as birds and mermaids. The chosen title, Silat (notice, information, alert, notice, announcement, or warning), is a message: “for all those who do not know us, or do not know that there are indigenous Wichí women who work in handicrafts, and that there have always been, since our ancestors. That we are here, present.”

Femme Minotaur consists of a small female minotaur sculpture made out of unfired red clay taken from a river near the artist’s home. The figure sits on top of the pigmented remnants of an oak tree that fell after the passing of Hurricane Maria, adding layers of meaning to the piece. This minotaur evokes other anthropomorphized creatures, particularly the sphinx, which have long been part of Tufiño’s body of work, as they explore biographical representation, family and matriarchal power. The piece is dedicated to her grandmother, Pilar, in whose house it was created.

This installation is possible thanks to the continuous support of farmers, artisans, keepers of seeds, researchers and authors around Borikén.

Books
Aurora Levins Morales, Arturo Massol Deyá, Carlos Taso Zenón, Dean Spade, Ernesto, Pujols Ovidio, Hilda Llorens, José Mari Mut, José Rivera, María Benedetti, Naomi Klein, Nelson Alvarez, Rafael Joglar, Ricardo, Levins Morales, Seed Broadcast, Vandana Shiva et al., La Vía Campesina

Furniture

Bench, rocking chairs and table
Don Luis Pérez Rosales
Yauco, Puerto Rico

Tropical print fabrics have long been part of Joiri Minaya’s critical toolbox, having incorporated these materials in her work via photographs, performances, and installations. The Cloakings is a series of digital and real coverings for public monuments that represent colonial legacies. These tropical print coverings were specifically designed as metaphors of resistance, incorporating plants used in Native American, Black and Afro-Caribbean rituals that reference poison healing, purging, cleansing, casting evil spirits away or protection, as well as the very plant that poisoned Ponce de León.

Through this process, Minaya resignifies her own work in order to create a statement on public space and national identity in relation, but not limited to, touristic and commemorative sites. The massive worldwide movement in defense of Black lives that took center stage during the Summer of 2020 demands a more just, decolonized future, and has consistently critiqued the reasons for keeping such monuments. By intervening on the statues, Minaya makes them hyper-visible and calls into question their place in our cities, and their ideological repercussions in our societies and our minds.

Marilyn Boror Bor is a Maya-Kaqchikel artist who works in multiple media including photography, painting, printmaking, installation and performance, with language and its inherent cosmovision being important concepts in her work. This selection from the series Dictionary of Forgotten Objects, consists of photos, definitions and contextualization of words, concepts and objects that represent a way of life and have generated a particular vocabulary within a rich and specific linguistic universe.

The objects speak about trades, shapes, objects and a rhythm of life in a specific territory. In turn, these forms of life and words, like the images that represent them in the piece, fade over time, but they make us recognize, remember and appreciate the richness of a culture.

This work of cinematic environmentalism takes place within the framework of a series of legal cases that led the forest to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to claim the rights of nature, with the forest as a living being, and the Sarayuku people as its defender.

What emerges is a multidimensional portrait of the forest and the relationships that have been established in and with the forest, particularly by the original Shuar and Sarayaku peoples, which calls into question the ideas of progress, development and wealth held in the West.

Together they created a bohío-workshop, a batey delimited with monoliths and other stone carvings, and dedicated themselves to re-learning indigenous Antillean pottery techniques working with natural clay from the area burned in an open fire, based on reference images and archaeological findings. The existence of the Chéverez family was just one of the indicators that the so-called extinction of the indigenous people in Borikén had not happened; they’d persisted.

The workshop became a learning center, work that Alice Chéverez, daughter of Doña Varín, has assumed and carried out since then until today, receiving visitors, giving classes and showing her creations. Her artisan work revives Taíno traditions and images based on archaeological finds and lived experience. In recent decades, the Taíno movement in Borikén and more widely in its diaspora and other parts of the Caribbean has gained strength, with greater demands for it to be recognized that indigenous peoples did not disappear after colonization, but resisted through guerrilla warfare, organized rebellions or retreating to rural areas, and they are still present.

Alice Chéverez
Arecibo, Puerto Rico 1971

Blowfish, 2020
Clay

4 x 4½ x 5”
Courtesy of the artist

Sea Turtle, 2020
Clay

4 x 6 x 4½”
Courtesy of the artist

The Rest of the Taíno (as Comfortable as Bats), 2021
Clay

3 x 7 x 4”
Courtesy of the artist

The Embrace of the Bat, 2020
Clay

3 x 8½ x 6"
Courtesy of the artist

The Jaguar, 2021
Clay

5 x 5½ x 5½”
Courtesy of the artist

Soul of the Craftsman, 2020
Clay

10 x 10 x 5"
Courtesy of the artist

Evarista "Varín" Chéverez Díaz
Morovis, Puerto Rico 1933 - 2010

The Awakening of the Matriarch, 1987-1994
Clay

5 x 4½ x 5”
Courtesy of Alice Chéverez

Karla Sofía Claudio Betancourt
San Juan, Puerto Rico 1987

the mass, 2020
Video

4:08 min

living stone, dead stone, 2020
Video

4:25 min

la reseña de cuquito, 2021
Video

4:19 min

Through her artistic and educational work, Karla Sofía Claudio Betancourt has developed knowledge related to mineral pigments and botany in Puerto Rico, manifesting itself mainly in illustrations, texts, photography and video. Mother of Five Bloods are watercolor trays whose design is based on the fauna present in and around the Cabachuelas Workshop, now and in ancient times. Each one represents the four siblings that Itiba Cahubaba gave birth to, according to the Taíno myth. The four brothers embody the cardinal points and the four elements: the rooster is fire and South, the sloth bear is earth and North, the frog is water and West, and the bat is air and East. All the pieces were made with Morovis clay, harvested and fired with Alice Chéverez.

The pieces by Orfón and Claudio Betancourt are key in understanding the network of relationships that has been established from the experiences in the workshop. The existence of these works implies the transmission of knowledge, sharing of beliefs, and exploration of identity. Through video, drawing and ceramics, both artists approach the geography, family ties and mysticism inherent in the territory that the Chéverez family have inhabited ancestrally.

Javier Orfón
Caguas, Puerto Rico 1989

The Invisible Cave, 2020
Ink on paper
20 x 33"
Courtesy of Hidrante

Amara Abdal Figueroa

Recent test bars and mixed objects, 2020 - ongoing
Unfired and fired clay samples, pyrometric cones, table, canvas
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of Amara Abdal Figueroa

In the gallery, the public can dive into samples of local clays, filter-failures as sculptures, photographs, clay protocols, poems, and the first prototypes of filters. In parallel to the exhibition, a group of apprentices will participate in the further study of local clay and the development of this accessible and durable water filter. Likewise, walkthroughs and workshops related to the project will be held for the general public.

Tierrafiltra is an invitation to those who feel passionate about the land and the right to water.

@tierrafiltra #tierrafiltra

Canoas, cayucos y balsas is an ongoing research and dissemination project on Antillean navigation. Inspired by the knowledge of the original peoples of the archipelago and in the spirit of collaboration of 19th century Antilleanism, the artist Engel Leonardo proposes to compile and put into dialogue theoretical and practical knowledge on Antillean navigation, based on the exchange and collaboration between artisans, artists and scientists, from the history of navigation of these peoples, to the techniques inherited and practiced by communities of current navigators. The project proposes to turn the gaze and the body to the sea, as being, symbol and manifestation of our Caribbean condition, as well as the creation of an Antillean fleet from different collaborations. 


Canoas, Cayucos y Balsas
Cayuco, 2019
Built in Sabana de la Mar, República Dominicana
Madera de Jabilla in República Dominicana; Molinillo in Puerto Rico
56 x 45 x 209”
Carving commissioned to the artisans Epifanio “Chano” Cancún and Federico “Ramirito” Rodríguez
Courtesy of the artists

In the first stage of the project entitled CAYUCO Leonardo collaborated with MAOF (Diego de la Cruz Gaitán and Gabriel Maldonado Andreu), a project-place with tools founded in 2013 that was built to gather materials, look at them, manipulate them and think with them. Following a series of research trips during 2017 and 2018, between Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the group generated drawings, transcripts, photographs, and audio and video recordings, as well as a bibliography and its own glossary.

In 2019, Leonardo and MAOF concluded their collaboration by working on the construction of a cayuco and doing sailing tests with artisans from Sabana de la Mar, inviting the artists Ramiro Chaves and Ricardo Ariel Toribio to document the process. Curators Yina Jiménez Suriel and Sofiá Bastidas, and other friends and colleagues participated in the experience. This Cayuco and the two videos presented here are the result of this Caribbean encounter.

Engel Leonardo's work crosses various media, such as sculpture, installation, site-specific interventions, and ready-mades. Based on research of the artisan and architectural forms of his native country, as well as some religious traditions and cultural exchange between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Leonardo proposes new aesthetic relationships with which to approach the history and traditions of the Caribbean region. The traditional Dominican wooden chairs serve as inspiration for Yamasá, a set of three schematic rectangular-shaped sculptures that exist as contemplative objects with an almost functional appearance.

Guano weaving covers part of the structure of the pieces in different configurations, like a loom or hinting at shapes and ties typical of a chair. Yamasá also happens to be a municipality of the Dominican Republic. Inspired by research and reconnaissance trips in which he gets to know the country, its own traditions and crafts, these pieces seek to integrate artisan work into the conceptual process of contemporary art. The colors of the sculptures also refer to the colors typical of the Dominican vernacular construction in rural areas.

Cabo Rojo evidences the approach that the artist has to his work: making trips throughout the Dominican Republic, outside the capital city, which lead him to field research documenting forms and social relationships. In this triptych, we observe an abstraction of the geography of Cabo Rojo beach, in the south of the country. The work stems from an interest in the plantain stain and the regional symbolism of the plantain itself in relation to gastronomy, politics, economy and invasions. This is also part of the artist's formal explorations in which he relates organic materials and forms with geometric and industrial ones, in order to approach geometric abstraction from the Caribbean.

Natalia Ortega Gamez's practice is focused on the use and integration of nature, clay and natural fabrics in installations, sculptures, and design pieces through the project Los Tejedores, which is co-directed by Ortega Gamez and Ricardo Ariel Toribio. This sculpture 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.

The Great Silence is a piece filmed between the now destroyed Arecibo Observatory, then the second largest radio telescope in the world, and the Río Abajo State Forest, located between the municipalities of Utuado and Arecibo, where there is currently a Puerto Rican parrot conservation program. The video features a monologue, written by science fiction author Ted Chiang, in which the parrot is the one who has the floor. The piece raises the dichotomy between wanting to communicate with outer space, but not understanding each other and much less trying to communicate with animals. The parrot pleads her case and leaves us with a message for humanity.

Download a copy of the exhibition's bilingual digital catalog.

Listen to the exhibition playlist on Spotify. Sounds of joy, social demands and spirituality through songs by artists from Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and Latin America. Musical selection by curator Marina Reyes Franco.

Download the educational material inspired by the exhibition The moment of yagrumo. This series of guides are designed as a set of educational activities that you can do individually or in a group, at the Museum, at home or in your classroom. Each module revolves around a natural resource in conversation with the works in the exhibition. It makes us aware of the urgency of implementing sustainable and regenerative practices in our daily lives, respecting and valuing the nature of our planet earth. Developed by MAC Educator Natalia Centeno.