Section 9

Guest Curation: Digital Sovereignties Art Exhibit

Visions of resistance against Puerto Rico’s colonially manufactured debt

curated by Abner Aldarondo

"Digital Sovereignties" deals

with how Puerto Rican artists have circulated their own images and visions of resistance against Puerto Rico’s colonially manufactured debt. The exhibition’s method of collecting – rigorous Instagram scrolling – emulates my own position as a diasporic Puerto Rican from Holyoke, MA. My political education and engagement with Puerto Rico’s debt crisis started on social media. It is also where I discovered the Puerto Rico Syllabus. This is to say that social media can serve as pedagogy, praxis, and, most importantly, a site for community-building. 

Read the rest of the curator's statement

I invite you to explore how the digital creates new geographies. Colectivo Moriviví, an all-women art collective, collaborates with Puerto Ricans from the island and the diaspora to create public art and artivism. “The PROMISE,” a mural in Holyoke, MA, destabilizes the notion of de aquí y de allá and considers the diaspora’s role in the archipelago’s resistances. Other pieces in this exhibit, “Cuando a sus playas llegó” by Garvin Sierra, “Quítate tu pa’ ponerme yo” by Rosa Colón Guerra and “Los hoyos de Puerto Rico” by Fernando L. Norat Pérez problematize the island’s hostile landscape by taking issue with how the debt crisis has made Puerto Rico’s infrastructure a place not for Puerto Ricans.

Another section of this exhibit reflects on disasters as socially constructed phenomena that provoke imaginaries of the monstrous.  For instance, Mya Pagán and Garvin Sierra depict those responsible for the economic disaster as monstrous figures. In “Se busca enjaular a esta bestia,” corrupt and money-hungry politicians are dangerous figures of evil. The Financial Oversight and Management Board, the fiscal board instated by the PROMESA Act, are also key subjects in “La Junta,” which dramatizes the board’s control over the island by placing the board member’s faces on an iconic rendition of Puerto Rico’s coat of arms.

Alongside the impulse to imagine those responsible for disasters as frightening figures, monsters also represent cultural anxieties and fears. They act as stand-ins for insurmountable grief and rage. Luzmarie Pagán Galán’s NO MAS!, a sketch she transformed into a mural in el Viejo San Juan, depicts a vejigante breaking free from chains. Altogether, these pieces ask us to look at the monsters around us, as well as the monsters that live inside of us, and to question what they require of us. Monsters can inspire sustainable futures—not just apocalyptic futures.

Art not only critiques social plights: it also puts forward new ways of being. José Primo Hernández’s “No comemos austeridad” criticizes the fiscal board’s austerity measures, such as budget cuts that disenfranchise the nation. The digital art piece shows the necessity of mutual support in the absence of governmental care. “la siembra” by s.alguien emphasizes the importance of protest, feminism, and land sovereignty. These two works show that art remains very close to social justice because it helps us both to discard systems that no longer serve us and visualize new worlds.

The digital age is now fundamental to our experiences of being human. For Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, it is how we keep in touch with our loved ones on the island and how we stay informed about the multiple crises they face. I conducted my fellowship with the Puerto Rico Syllabus virtually, and I collaborated with the team despite never having met them in person. This is what is fundamental to the digital. It is intrinsically diasporic. It is also conducive to collaboration and the circulation of ideas. It is also vital in developing Puerto Rico’s sovereignties, where a web of Boricuas fight for a better Puerto Rico.

-Abner Aldarondo, curator

Reflections

Colectivo Moriviví. “Colonia,” 2018. Mini Public Art Series. Mural. 

Project sponsored by the CPSC Office of Hampshire College.  Production done in coordination with Nueva Esperanza, Inc.  Community Mural with the youth from CUYO Social Justice Progra

Work Inspired by (De) Colonial Reconquista, Performance, 2014, by Marina Barsey Janer.

The PROMESA Act is a sharp reminder of Puerto Rico’s colonial status. Shortly after the act was passed, the anonymous collective Artistas Solidarios y en Resistencia removed the color of an iconic door with the Puerto Rican flag in el Viejo San Juan. This new version of the flag quickly became popular as a Puerto Rican symbol of resistance. The Promise is in Holyoke, MA, the city with the largest Puerto Rican population per capita in the United States. The painted door shows a back turned woman looking through a shadow-like gate. A mirror rests behind her head with the words “your reflection,” and written across her back is “colony.” What role does the diaspora play in Puerto Rico’s colonial status?

Prioritizing Debt Repayment

These digital illustrations speak to the Infrastructure & Everyday Crisis section by showing how prioritizing the debt’s repayment harms Puerto Ricans’ everyday life.These works ask us to consider the growing vulnerability of Puerto Rico’s land and infrastructure as it undergoes exploitation. 

Fernando L. Norat Pérez. “Los hoyos de Puerto Rico,” 2019. Digital art.

Cars trapped in a massive pothole in “Los hoyos de Puerto Rico” make light of driving on the Island’s roads. At the same time, its humor emphasizes how something as mundane as a pothole is an everyday reminder of degrading infrastructure.

“Cuando a sus plays llegó“ takes a more solemn approach. It depicts a beheaded Christopher Columbus, whose likeliness is taken from The Birth of the New World statue in Arecibo. It links the present-day gentrification of Puerto Rico’s beaches to Spanish colonialism.

“Quítate tu pa’ ponerme yo” (Move out of the way so that I can come) is a lyric from Eddie Dee’s song, “Los 12 discípulos.”. The use of the phrase is two-fold in Colón Guerra’s piece: it is sinister, a reminder that Puerto Rico’s beaches are under attack by capitalist vultures. On the other hand, it is a call for those same vultures to exit.

Garvin Sierra. “Cuando a sus playas llegó,” 2020. Digital art.

Rosa Colón Guerra. “Quítate tu pa’ ponerme yo,” 2021. Digital art.

La Junta and Other Monsters

Monsters are alive and real in Puerto Rico, and politicians act like them. “Se busca enjaular a esta bestia” is a direct response to obstruction of justice allegations towards the former governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vázquez. Her administration was charged with mismanaging emergency supplies after powerful earthquakes rattled Puerto Rico in January 2020. “La junta“ references Jose Campeche y Jordan’s painting, “Agnus Dei” (1806-1809), representing the Puerto Rican coat of arms. Stamped on the seven gold ringlets are the faces of the fiscal board members. The call to trap and behead these monsters is to call for justice against a monstrous government.

Mya Pagán. “Se busca enjaular a esta bestia,” 2020. Digital art.

Garvin Sierra. “La junta,” 2019.

Luzmarie Pagán Galán. “NO MAS!,” 2019. Watercolor.

“I’m not one to get into politics but no one should remain silent after all he’s done to our Island and people.” – Luzmarie Pagán Galán

Leaked private messages between Ricardo Rosselló, former Puerto Rican governor, and his administration sparked the 2019 Puerto Rican summer of protest. On Instagram Luzmarie Pagán Galán posted her watercolor drawing, and the vejigante’s screech seems to capture the frustration she expresses in the caption. Her vejigante’s scream also exists in both digital and physical space: it’s a mural on Calle Norzagaray, an Old San Juan tourist attraction. The screams of protest live offline and online.

Mutual Support

José Primo Hernández. “No comemos austeridad,” 2020.

“No Comemos Austeridad” presents a community-operated soup kitchen. In the background, two people donate food to the operation, and two people serve a small girl. Mutual support takes form in a soup kitchen, which underscores the symbolism of the black and white Puerto Rican flag. Austerity malnourishes its people, forcing them to feed themselves.

s.alguien [Sharon Nichole González Colón]. “la siembra,” Digital art.

Two towering figures nurture and protect the verdant landscape in “la siembra“. The text on their shirts, “Don’t take away my land” and “Down with the patriarchy, damn it!”, links feminism and environmentalism. The world is also somewhat upside down in “la siembra”. From above emerge hands that hold and bang pots while a sunflower comes down the middle. Perhaps protest is the weather that allows the landscape to flourish. Here, social and environmental wellbeing are inseparable.

Read s.alguien’s artist statement on Colectivo Moriviví’s website here.