Black art is currently on prominent display in Puerto Rico’s San Juan neighborhood of Santurce. Exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC) and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (MAPR) reveal how Afro Puerto Ricans interpret their roles in the island’s culture.
Black art created from 1990 to the present in an exhibit called “Puerto Rico Negrx” is showing at MAC. The exhibition features the work of 30 artists and will be on view through September 2024.
The show hearkens back to the “Paréntesis: Eight Contemporary Black Artists” showcase launched in 1996 by the artist and curator Edwin Velázquez. At the time, Velázquez’s “Paréntesis” was one of the first exhibitions to point to the importance of recognizing Afro Puerto Rican artists as a distinct group whose work spoke about an identity that is not always acknowledged.
Some of Velázquez’s work is on display as part of the four separate galleries that make up “Puerto Rico Negrx.” In his Afro Boricua altar series, he painted abstract imaginings that evoke the spirits of famous Afro Puerto Ricans and pairs them with the names of Africa’s supernatural orisha gods.
There is “Osun/Sylvia del Villard (1928–1990),” “Oggún/Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965),” “Orula/Rafael Cordero y Molina (1790–1868),” “Eggún / Cecilia Orta Allende (1923–2000),” “Elegguá/Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874–1938),” “Obatalá/Rafael Cepeda (1910–1996),” “Changó/Ismael Rivera (1931–1987),” “Inle/José Celso Barbosa (1857–1921),” “Yemayá/Julia de Burgos (1914–1953),” “Odduá/Tite Curet Alonso (1926–2003),” “Ochosi/Isabel “La Negra” Luberza Oppenheimer (1901–1974),” and “Olofi/Ernesto Ramos Antonini (1898–1963).”
Velázquez’s work points to the survival of an African essence in Puerto Rico. This idea is also proposed in “Teléfono Caracol/Seashell Telephone” by Kiván Quiñones Beltrán, which points to the conch shell and its power to reconnect present-day African diasporans with their past.
“The Anticolonial Powers in Puerto Rico” by Shellyne Rodriguez
“Teléfono Caracol/Seashell Telephone” by Kiván Quiñones
Scene from a wall in installation “La Trampa/The Trap” by Edgarda Larregui Julia de Burgos by Carlos Irizarry
Pedro Albizu Campos by Lorenzo Homar
“The Anticolonial Powers in Puerto Rico” by Shellyne Rodriguez
“The Anticolonial Powers in Puerto Rico” by Shellyne Rodriguez
Shellyne Rodriguez looks at how the worship of Yoruba orishas was folded within Christianity in her work, “Las Potencias Anticoloniales en Puerto Rico/The Anticolonial Powers in Puerto Rico.” As the description of this piece points out, “In the center of the work, Carmen Reyes, a 96-year-old Carolina native, holds a machete symbolizing resistance rather than the passivity and martyrdom represented by the crucifixion of Christ in the original image.”
In the various photographs that make up the display “You Don’t Look Like…,” the writer, dancer, and actor Javier Cardona imitates the numerous depictions of Blackness that Afro Puerto Ricans are made to confront. Images show Cardona in the overexaggerated and clichéd acting roles Black actors are often offered. These are the kinds of portrayals that reinforce stereotypes of Blackness in Puerto Rico.
In contrast, the complexity of Afro Puerto Rican life is on display on the walls of “La Trampa/The Trap,” an installation by Edgardo Larregui. The artist interviewed, photographed, and recorded the poems and songs of the Afro Puerto Ricans who fish for blue land crabs. Walking inside the installation is a means of entering the world of an Afrodescendant culture that is currently changing due to strains from the threat of climate change.
“Puerto Rico Negrx” also features the work of Juan Sánchez, who uses imagery from the Nation of Islam and iconography from Africa to point to the ties between African Americans and Afro Puerto Ricans in his “Cries and wounded whispers for Malcolm X/Gritos y susurros por Malcolm X.”
While Ángel Borroto Díaz shows an altar-like triptych called “Direcciones/Pilares/Estructura (Directions/Pillars/Structure).” Borroto’s work presents abstract drawings of slave ships––those massive structures used to kidnap and transport Africans to the Americas––which he highlights to emphasize their role in the institutionalization of anti-Black racism.
Works on display in MAPR’s permanent “Puerto Rico Plural” exhibition, which is within a 15-minute walk down the street from MAC, also feature Black artists and renderings of images of famous Black Puerto Ricans. Alongside horned vejigante masks and depictions of bomba dances, the MAPR’s show has silkscreens of Pedro Albizu Campos by Lorenzo Homar and an oil painting of Julia de Burgos by Carlos Irizarry.
Both the MAC and MAPR museums show how the interpretations of Afro Puerto Rican artists and their art are being accepted in the island’s culture.
