Caribbean Beat — September/October 2019 (#159)

need to know
On View
2019 Whitney
Biennial
Julián Sánchez González on the spiritual and historic
concerns of Puerto Rican artists represented in this major
biennial survey of contemporary American art
Since its first iteration in 1932, the Whitney Biennial, one of
the most important surveys of contemporary American art,
has traditionally given little attention to artists based in Puerto
Rico. However, this year’s five Puerto Rican artists, together
with the previous selection from the biennial of 2017, continue
to tell an excitingly different story. As an unincorporated
United States territory with no electoral voting rights, dealing
with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria sweeping through
the Caribbean and a recent surge of political protests,
Puerto Rico’s presence in the show is a timely and poignant
commentary on neocolonial politics in the Caribbean. In
addition to the participation of artists nibia pastrana santiago
and Sofía Gallisá-Muriente, pieces by Daniel Lind-Ramos and
Las Nietas de Nonó address these issues through innovative
proposals in installation and performance formats.
Under the curatorial lens of Jane Panetta and Rujeko
Hockley, this selection of Caribbean artists followed a
lengthy process which included over three hundred studio
visits across twenty-five locations in the United States. In
general terms, the curators have tended to favour topics
related to new readings of history, questions on race and
gender, the vulnerability of the body, and community
engagement, among others. In addition to these transversal
topics, the five Boricua creators’ presence in the Biennial
signals an ongoing interest of the Whitney Museum in
furthering their Latinx curatorial and educational initiative.
The recent hiring of curator Marcela Guerrero and the 2018
show Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern
Architecture, New Art, for example, aim to further provide
underrepresented communities with a louder voice and
greater agency within the museum’s space. More specifically,
the Biennial works by Lind-Ramos and Las Nietas de Nonó
bring to the fore concerns about the retrieval of ancestral
knowledge and spiritual practices, and the diasporic
experience of Afro-Puerto Rican communities.
According to Holland Cotter, art critic for the New
York Times, one of the most transgressive and effective
contributions of the 2019 Whitney Biennial is its emphasis on
spiritual practices, including the work of Daniel Lind-Ramos,
born in 1953 in Loíza, the northeastern stronghold of Afro-
Puerto Rican culture. Lind-Ramos’s most recent practice
focuses on the creation of large-scale sculptural pieces
made from found materials, both industrial and organic.
Paula Court, courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art
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