Caribbean Beat — September/October 2019 (#159)

His piece Maria-Maria (2019) is notorious for conflating
spirituality with assemblage techniques in an original and
striking composition employing coconuts, bubble wrap, and
— most critically — FEMA (Federal Emergency Management
Agency) blue tarps. Still lingering on rooftops in Loíza two
years after Hurricane Maria, this waterproof material speaks
directly to a story of political strife, unresponsiveness, and
neglect towards the socioeconomic recovery of Puerto Rico
after the island’s financial and natural catastrophes.
Moreover, the totem-like structure of this piece and the
use of the blue tarps recall a Madonna’s draping veil, and
reflect on local hybridised altar-making practices serving as
primordial sources for mental endurance and communitybuilding
in times of distress. Spirituality and craft aesthetics
speak to each other here in a candid, unmediated way, a
curatorial avenue that Panetta and Hockley investigated and
pursued as a working paradigm for this Biennial. Overall, this
piece, together with Lind-Ramos’s similarly breathtaking
installation Centinelas (2013), speaks of the survival of
African diasporic spiritualities and culture despite the longstanding
presence of colonialist, oppressive structures in
racial configurations and social relations in the Caribbean.
Also attempting to make a statement on the importance
of traditional knowledge systems, Las Nietas de Nonó — a
sister-duo of performers, Lydela (born 1979) and Michel
(1982) Nonó — performed Ilustraciones de la Mecánica
at the Whitney on three occasions in June. Previously
presented at the 2018 Berlin Biennial, this sinister and
dystopian performance work confronts the viewer with a
gory reenactment of a sterilisation procedure that Lydela,
dressed as a white doctor, performs on her sister Michel as
she covers her face with her skirt upside down. Leaving the
viewer little room for assessing the patient’s expressions,
beyond a disfigured body that is violated with scientific
curiosity and self-indulgent desire, Ilustraciones refers to a
series of hysterectomies performed illegally on black women
from rural Puerto Rico between the 1930s and 1980s,
encouraged by mainland authorities.
The staging of this act is reinforced by the use of mirrors
placed on the ceiling, a gesture forcing the viewer to engage in
a voyeuristic attitude. Further confining the patient’s body into,
for instance, fragmented legs or a mock-up open belly made of
vegetable leather, the still images from these reflected views
constitute a powerful compositional choice that speaks of the
artists’ interest in investigating violence against black bodies
in their subjection to experimentation in hospitals, schools,
and prisons. Ultimately, this confrontational work denounces
the overriding of the role of healers or curanderas/os by
Western medical practices. Focusing on compartmentalised
specialisation rather than holistic approaches, modern
medicine neglects a fundamental aspect of healing, namely our
relationship to various elements and cycles of the natural world.
This concern is a growing trend in the work of contemporary
artists living in diasporic conditions, such as a recent
performance by Guadalupe Maravilla, Walk on Water,
at the Queens Museum.
By referencing events critical to the survival of
their communities through the lens of spirituality
and ancestral heritage, Lind-Ramos and Las
Nietas de Nonó put forward a distinct and unique
voice into the plethora of political and social
claims brought together under the same roof at
the Whitney Biennial. While deeply entrenched
in the Caribbean’s recent and distant histories,
their works transgress boundaries of time and
space as they approach with aesthetic finesse
the challenges of moving forward into new, more
sustainable paradigms for collective behaviour and
thinking.
Ron Amstutz, courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art
Opposite page Performance by Las Nietas de
Nonó, 28 June, 2019, at the Whitney Biennial
2019, Whitney Museum of American Art
Left Centinelas (Sentinels) (2013), by Daniel Lind-
Ramos, installed in the Whitney Biennial 2019
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