By Melody Rames-Wiggins
Caribbean Net News St Croix Correspondent
Email: melody@caribbeannetnews.com
ST CROIX, USVI: Several US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rican artists will be featured in a Boston art exhibition September 18 through October 13. The exhibition will be held at the Grossman Gallery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) in Boston, Massachusetts.
Titled "America's Paradise" and "Isla Del Encanto": Contemporary Art from the American Caribbean, the exhibition showcases current work by US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico artists "whose work is actively engaged in a serious, often angst-filed conversation about the myth of paradise and attempts to reclaim innocence. Ecological concerns, issues of identity, migration, and the complex relationship with the mainland United States are among the topics that inform their work." according to a Museum School statement.
Joanna Soltan, SMFA Curator, conceived the idea during a recent trip to St. Croix. She was invited by the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts (CMCArts) to be an artist-in-residence -- a program funded by the VI Council on the Arts. Soltan visited several high schools and presented public lectures about curatorial work.
Soltan said many artists attended the lectures and invited her to view their work. It was, to a large extent, through these public exchanges and studio visits that she was introduced to the bountiful world of art on the island. She made subsequent trips back to St. Croix to select a field of artists to show in Boston.
In selecting work for the exhibition, Soltan said; "I tried to give our viewers a sense of the broad range of concerns explored by these artists. "All are internally driven and passionate about what they have to say," said Soltan. "Their work, while rooted in a specific geographical location will continue its discourse in an altered context".
"I always wanted to tap into the Boston community," said film maker Johanna Bermudez who will show her award winning documentary; "Vieques: An Island Forging Futures" at the fall exhibit. "This exhibition gives me the opportunity to be exposed to a community that is home to more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans," she noted.
Mike Walsh's artistic entry graces the cover of the SMFA Fall Calendar of Exhibitions and Public Programs. "It's a great honor," Walsh said. "I'm pleased and humbled that a curator would look at my work and say it was special and place it on the cover."
Walsh works mainly in woods and metals but this piece is a journey into another form of expression which even the artist struggles to define in words. "It's beyond words," Walsh says. "It's interesting - almost otherworldly."
Fashioned from blue plastic bags tied onto a wire grid and displayed in a natural setting complemented by the contrasting colors of nature, the prevailing winds inflate the bags causing them to "rustle, whisper and come alive." Walsh's piece will be shown in a video documentation to best display the artist's intention.
The show's title incorporates license-plate slogans from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. "While the slogans evoke a sense of fascination with these exotic locals they also speak to the popular, yet superficial, perceptions about the Caribbean islands," the release states.
Included in the exhibition are paintings and work on paper by Monica Marin (St Croix), Elsa María Meléndez (PR), Shansi Miller (St. Thomas), Maud Pierre-Charles (St. Croix), and Rafael Trelles (PR); sculptures by Luca Gasperi (St. Croix); installations by Edgar Endress and Lori Lee (Endress is from Chile, but his work is actively engaged in issues of migration in the Caribbean), and Erik Pedersen (St. Thomas); video documentation of installations by Mike Walsh (St. Croix); a video by Quintín Rivera-Toro (PR); and a documentary film by Johanna Bermúdez Ruiz (St. Croix). |
