Pepon Osorio at 516arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico Feb.19th - May 14 2011. OMG!
Posted on | 2/6/11 | No Comments
So, through a fluke of fate or luck or gods know what, I entered the wrong search parameters into google when finding links for my last post and randomly discovered something amaaaazing. The local gallery I love/hate and volunteered at is participating in "Latina/o Visual Imaginary: Intersection of Word & Image" a show running from February to May as part of the "East Coast/Southwest—Latino Literary Imagination: Narrative Voices and the Spoken Word" biregional conferance. By some vile quirk of fate this show opens just 2 days after I leave Albuquerque forever to return to Puerto Rico, before moving to China. This sucks, to put it lightly and has got me a bit down. I cut ties with this gallery in disgust with some of the IMO crappy shows they were doing about a year ago and boy am I regretting it now. I am trying to suck up to a few pertinent people to see if there is any way I can help with the installation this but I'm not counting on it. I will let you know if I manage to participate though and will try to get an interview with Pepon Osorio if possible!
If you want to learn more, go here for more information. I can guarantee you that this show will be excellent so you should definitely go in my place! Let me know if you attend and gimme all the details!
The responsibility of being an artist?
Posted on | 2/4/11 | No Comments
I recently read in Autogiro that Antonio Martorell, a well known Puerto Rican artist had chosen to remove his art from the Puerto Rican Supreme Court in protest of the current political climate there. This brings in a topic that I think I have sort of broached in my other posts: the socio-cultural responsibility of being an artist. Is it our place, as creators, interpreters and communicators of culture (art), to act/protest in an attempt to change society/culture/politic policies? Is it like that poem: When they came for the jews, I did nothing… when they came for me, there was noone to do anything (I’m paraphrasing). Do we, as artists, have a responsibility to use art to make political/cultural/social statements?
