{"id":5062314,"date":"2023-12-12T19:04:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T19:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illatinonews.com\/?p=5062314"},"modified":"2023-12-12T19:04:03","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T19:04:03","slug":"puerto-rican-chicago-in-tumultuous-times-a-review-of-the-mcas-entre-horizontes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/illn\/2023\/12\/12\/puerto-rican-chicago-in-tumultuous-times-a-review-of-the-mcas-entre-horizontes\/","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Rican Chicago in Tumultuous Times: A Review of the MCA\u2019s entre horizontes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the past year, Chicago has made international news as asylum seekers from Ukraine and Venezuela desperately seek refuge in the Windy City. More recently, the press has rightfully covered the dishearteningly unequal<\/a> treatment received by these two groups of migrants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such stories from Chicago remind us that migration is inherently political in character, injustices among diasporic communities are real, and representation itself often informs a group\u2019s well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given these latest headlines, a current exhibit at Chicago\u2019s Museum of Contemporary Art feels particularly timely. Titled entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico<\/em><\/a>, the survey show features 17 artists, each of whom maintain a relationship with both Chicago and Puerto Rico. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having opened in August 2023, entre horizontes\u2014<\/em>best translated as \u201cbetween horizons\u201d\u2014will run through May 5, 2024. Curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates<\/a>, the ambitious exhibition features an \u201cintergenerational group of artists with ties to Chicago\u201d who work in different media\u2014paintings, films, and a few installation pieces. Furthermore, the exhibition showcases paraphernalia from Puerto Rican activists operating in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most compelling pieces included in the show combine the aesthetic and the political, as well as those that point up the shared trajectories of social justice in Chicago and Puerto Rico. Indeed, rendering the show\u2019s title in lower-case letters\u2014entre horizontes<\/em> rather than \u201cEntre Horizontes\u201d\u2014aptly captures the exhibition\u2019s guiding conceit: to collapse hierarchies and sidestep any sense of capitalized place names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to Puerto Rico\u2019s unique relationship with the United States\u2014technically defined as an \u201cunincorporated territory<\/a>\u201d\u2014entre horizontes<\/em> speaks to both the pain and joy of belonging to a community without clear national horizons. Today, the Puerto Rican diaspora is routinely conceptualized as a community in limbo, perpetually in transit between the U.S. Mainland and a diminutive island in the Antilles via a \u201cflying bus<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entre horizontes <\/em>follows soon after two other U.S. art shows highlighting the Caribbean and, more specifically, Puerto Rico. Between 2022 and 2023, New York City\u2019s Whitney Museum of Modern Art displayed no existe un mundo poshurac\u00e1n<\/em><\/a>: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria<\/em>, while another show curated by Acevedo-Yates titled Forecast Form<\/em><\/a>: Art in the\u00a0Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s\u2013Today <\/em>was put on at Chicago\u2019s MCA and is currently<\/a> at Boston\u2019s\u00a0Institute of Contemporary Art. In many ways, Acevedo-Yates\u2019 shrewd vision of the Puerto Rican\u00a0diaspora\u2014its people, its art, and its politics\u2014is deepened and clarified with entre horizontes.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is especially opportune given Chicago\u2019s recent interest in preserving the histories<\/a>, promoting entrepreneurship<\/a>, and officializing the monuments<\/a> of the city\u2019s Puerto Rican community. Chicago, a profoundly polyglot city, also speaks boricua<\/em>. The exhibit benefits greatly from Acevedo-Yates\u2019 due diligence in the political history<\/a> of Chicago\u2019s Puerto Rican community. She rightly notes<\/a> that it was in Chicago where Jos\u00e9 \u201cCha Cha\u201d Jim\u00e9nez<\/a> founded the Young Lords Organization<\/a>, a street gang that transformed itself into an anti-colonial activist group, and whose social justice initiatives aimed to help the Puerto Rican community in neighborhoods like West Park, Lincoln Park, and Humboldt Park even while advocating for Puerto Rican independence from afar. The history of Chicago\u2019s Puerto Rican community is extensive, rich, and defined largely by struggle: the city witnessed the Division Street Riots<\/a> of 1966, the 1980 arrest of members of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberaci\u00f3n Nacional<\/a> (FALN), and the 1993 kerfuffle<\/a> surrounding a statue dedicated social activist Pedro Albizu Campos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acevedo-Yates astutely places paraphernalia surrounding these disparate but relate political events squarely in the center of the MCA\u2019s Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel Galleries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fig. 1. Frank Espada. Various photographs from the Puerto Rican Diaspora documentary project. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Frank Espada\u2019s<\/a> NEH-financed street photographs of hardscrabble yet sanguine Puerto Ricans hang across the back wall\u2014figures that are a testament to Puerto Rican history (fig. 1).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fig. 2. Elizam Escobar. La ficci\u00f3n<\/em> (1989). Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another highlight of the show is a La ficci\u00f3n<\/em>, a 1989 oil painting by political prisoner Elizam Escobar, a member of the FALN dedicated to Puerto Rico\u2019s independence, and who was eventually sentenced to 68 years for seditious conspiracy (fig. 2). Rendered in tenebrous and\u00a0ghoulish hues, the painting depicts the nine United States Supreme Court justices, poised\u00a0unperturbed over Escobar\u2019s dead body.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Escobar would later refer to his time spent in federal prison as experiencing a type of \u201cliving death<\/a>.\u201d Perhaps like Puerto Rico itself, a locale situated in the half-lights of nationhood, Escobar, too, finds himself in limbo.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These explicitly political interventions are judiciously tempered throughout the gallery with more aestheticized pieces that still serve to underscore the rich peculiarity of the Puerto Rican diaspora in Chicago and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fig. 3. Arnaldo Roche Rabell. Aqu\u00ed y all\u00e1<\/em> (1989). Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A case in point is Arnaldo Roche Rabell\u2019s Aqu\u00ed y all\u00e1 <\/em>from 1989 (fig. 3). The work portrays four shadowy, abstract, and faceless human subjects rendered in painterly strokes and backgrounded by Chicago\u2019s brawny, immediately recognizable skyline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The allegorical piece feels reminiscent of a danse macabre<\/a>: the tense, eerie bodies in motion express both the ecstasy of arrival on the shores of Lake Michigan and the beautiful struggle for survival which is the American Dream. Aqu\u00ed y all\u00e1<\/em>, like Pedro Pietri\u2019s celebrated poem \u201cPuerto Rican Obituary<\/a>\u201d articulates a people\u2019s ambiguous relationship to life in the U.S. According to the accompanying museum label, Roche Rabell created the work by placing \u201ca paint-covered canvas over a model\u2019s body and vigorously rubbed the resulting contours.\u201d Thus, unlike Yves Klein\u2019s mid-century attempts<\/a> to integrate models, paints, and performance\u2014works that suggested the esoteric spiritualism of a human race ready to atomize itself\u2014Roche Rabell\u2019s painting underscores the corporeality and humanity at the heart of issues all too often reified: nationalism, migration, and labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Edra Soto. Tropicalamerican<\/em> (2014). Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The cleverest, most striking but also, subtlest piece in the show floats high above the gallery, hanging from the ceiling. There, we find Edra Soto<\/a>\u2019s Tropicalamerican<\/em>, a set of four flags whose designs are familiar to the eye, yet are uncannily rendered in earthy green tones (fig. 4). The reworked U.S. and Puerto Rican flags were crafted by digitally photographing real, tropical leaves that had originally been quilted together. From below, Soto\u2019s work beautifully mimics the look of undulating fabric. Although Soto\u2019s professional website<\/a> proposes the work of Jasper Johns<\/a> as a point of reference, given the context of the MCA show, it is difficult not to register Tropicalamerican <\/em>as influenced by Puerto Rico\u2019s remarkably playful and political relationship with its own flag. The flag, as a foremost emblem of nationhood, takes on a unique salience for Puerto Rico\u2014this nation without a state<\/a>. Indeed, Puerto Rico\u2019s paradoxical place vis-a-vis the community of nations is well-known. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus although the island has representatives in D.C., their voting power<\/a> is significantly limited; moreover, those on the island pay Social Security yet enjoy fewer federal benefits<\/a>. These are but a few of the many contradictory elements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the absence of complete sovereignty, Puerto Rican energies often focus on their (aesthetic) symbols of nationhood\u2014paramount among these, is the flag itself. Thus, while the mid-century saw the Puerto Rican flag banned<\/a> to quell the independence campaign, today \u201cQue bonita bandera<\/a>\u201d\u2014that is, \u201cWhat a Beautiful Flag\u201d\u2014is the movement\u2019s unofficial anthem<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Puerto Rican flag is paraded<\/a> up and down the streets of New York City\u2019s Fifth Avenue, is included on the uniforms worn by the commonwealth<\/a>\u2019s own Olympic team<\/a>, and becomes an emblem of resistance when cast in black and white<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seen in this context, Soto\u2019s Tropicalamerican<\/em> playfully challenges received national ideologies; the flags\u2019 verdant tones suggest that people and places may be better organized according to affect and environment, rather than abstract, governmental objectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although social critics<\/a> have rightfully interrogated whether the discussion of statehood, Puerto Rico\u2019s cultural nationhood, or even pop stars<\/a> can catalyze worthwhile political change on the island and beyond, Acevedo-Yates\u2019 exhibit <\/em>proposes that politics, too, is an art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as Chicago bureaucrats decide the place<\/a> of Latinx migrants in the city, entre horizontes <\/em>reminds us that these same communities have consistently crafted their own stories with style, grace, and art. Let\u2019s hope they continue the beautiful struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cover Photo: Elizam Escobar (b. 1948, Ponce, Puerto Rico; d. 2021, San Juan, Puerto Rico),\u00a0La Ficci\u00f3n<\/em>, 1989. Oil over acrylic on canvas; framed. Private Collection, Puerto Rico. Photo: John Betancourt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Originally from Chicago, Dr. Kevin M. Anzzolin is a Lecturer of Spanish at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. Besides teaching a range of courses in Spanish and English, his monograph,\u00a0Guardians of Discourse: Literature and Journalism in Porfirian Mexico<\/em>, is slated to be published with the University of Nebraska Press in 2024. Both his scholarship and his public-facing pieces can be\u00a0found\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Notes: Do you have an idea for an Opinion Editorial or Review? We want to hear from you! Send us submissions to info@LatinoNewsNetwork.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past year, Chicago has made international news as asylum seekers from Ukraine and Venezuela desperately seek refuge in 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