Jesús Bubu Negrón
The genuine effect of the Gran Bienal Tropical was the introduction of apathy in the gaze of the Puerto Rican artists towards the actual social-economic situation of the country; and the adoption of the ‘tropical’, colourful, banal and mediocre conceptual and aesthetical approaches proposed by outside curator Pablo León de la Barra. After setting out some context and background, this essay will explore this curatorial art colonization, its causes and consequences, through the evaluation of the Biennials phenomena in the Latin American context. To set out these negative effects I will make observations on the Puerto Rican case, specifically the Gran Bienal Tropical, together with analysis of the outcomes of other Puerto Rican curators’ projects, Calibán (2016) and I’m not drunk (2019). In the essay I argue that Puerto Rico, has become as a playfield of foreign individual’s career developments— colonial curatorship. As such they are free to shamelessly impose their version of the ‘Tropical’ and in this they are backed up by the local art circuit that reproduces their system rather than questions it.
Rainbow by Radamés ‘Juni’ Figueroa
After World War II, Latin American art was already shown internationally, but it was paternalistically evaluated by foreign art critics to be “derivative if they chose to be abstract or behind the times if they did not” (Barnitz, 2001:143). The abstract art that prevailed at this time was promoted around the continent by the patronage of multinationals, and by the new modern art museums and galleries. It is in this context biennials begin to happen, starting with the São Paulo Biennial in 1951 financed by the Italian-Brazilian industrialist Ciccillo Matarazzo. This biennial’s objective was to bring Europeans, North American and Latin American artist together, and to position Latin American art in the ‘Big Art World Circuit’. In Puerto Rico biennials did not arrive until 1970 with the San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Engraving: organised by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, San Juan Biennial, was focused on “forms of expression that were widely practiced by Puerto Rican artists” (Bayón 1979). Unlike São Paulo Biennial, the San Juan Biennial was far from promoting abstraction and the ‘global’ art content, and the work presented was engaged with the Caribbean and Latin American political and social situation. Forty-one years after we will see a very different art biennale in Puerto Rico—the Gran Bienal Tropical.
Fake Allora & Calzadilla palm fan
In 2011, the Guggenheim Museum curator for the Latin American phase, Pablo León de la Barra organized the first Gran Bienal Tropical in Puerto Rico. Over twenty artists participated to win the Gran prize: a pineapple coloured with gold spray. The works included went from plastic blades of a fan installed on a palm tree, to wearable collars with drinking jugs. The first prize was given to Jesus ‘Bubu’ Negrón: “for his way of questioning Puerto Rican folklore and reincorporating it to contemporary life” (de la Barra, 2011). Negrón presented copies of traditional folkloric masks made out of coconuts and installed in coconut trees. It should be pointed out that ‘Bubu’ Negron’s work is usually created by the hands of Puerto Rican artisans and then he uses them with his ‘minimal intervention policy.’ The show also included some ‘late arrivals’ work.
After the Gran Bienal the curator wrote about the event, using Brazilian visual artist and theorist, Helio Oiticica’s 1968 words as epigraph:
The myth of ‘Tropicality’ is much more than parrots and banana trees: it is the consciousness of not being conditioned by established structures, hence highly revolutionary in its entirety. Any conformity, be it intellectual, social, or existential, is contrary to its principal idea.
It is very interesting that León de la Barra positioned his project under these lines since his selection of work—the creation of the entire event—was closer to the opposite of what Tropicality is and what Oiticica denounced.
Johnny La Gente Esta Muy Loca by Adriana Lara
The Gran Bienal occurred in the Piñones area that is characterized for being full of colourful precarious kiosks on the side of the beach with cheap fried food, beers and loud music and they are owned and run by the black people of Loiza (the Municipality in which Piñones is located). Loiza is known as the capital of tradition because of its religious devotion, advocacy and preservation of the Afro Puerto Rican culture. It is a governmentally abandoned region with almost a 52% of families living below the poverty line (Data USA 2017). Loizeños has struggled and resisted in the last decades with the invasive attempts of ‘Big Tourism’ and residential developers (empowered by the Puerto Rican courts). We could even use Piñones as a fitting metaphor of the Puerto Rican social economic abandonment and exploitation by the US empire. In such a context curator de la Barra decided to make the Gran Bienal Tropical happen.
Isla Coca by Coca Collective
In the selection of participatory artists of the ‘Tropicality’, foreign artists were included but not one Loiza artist (almost thirty artists were participating). One might say that they resisted taking part in this event because of outrage, but there is no real evidence of this. Nevertheless, in 2016, year of the second edition of the Gran Bienal, the Loizeño artist Daniel Lind-Ramos was included in a selection of over sixty artists. Under the name of Propaganda Pirata (Pirate Propaganda), the second Bienal happened in the same facilities and with the same tone on 2011, only that this time three Puerto Rican (non-Loizeños) curators were included in the five people panel. At this point we must examine the work of two of the select curators and how the discourse of the Tropical Bienal is reproduced and embraced by them in other exhibitions of local art.
Ponchos Anti Zika by Jessica Kaire
Marina Reyes Franco is a young independent Puerto Rican curator and creator of the 2014 exhibition Calibán for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Puerto Rico. For this show, four of the six artists participating were part of the Gran Bienal. In this case, Reyes Franco was inspired by Caliban, a Shakespearian character from The Tempest who is Prospero’s monstrous slave and often seen as a symbol of the colonial oppressed. The curator made the selection of artists based on those that shared the values of commitment to experimental art with a dedication towards the local environment. She was also interested in portraying the artistic cultural heritage and the contemporary frame of mind of the Island. With this in mind, the MACPR provided the scenery of a show that included a wooden terrace with disco lights and karaoke equipment, an Art Book as a skateboard, two dog trays with engraved words such as freedom, land, security, etc.
El Nuevo horizonte by Radamés ‘Juni’ Figueroa
We should question why Reyes Franco decided to use the mask of the ‘oppressed’ character of Caliban, when the exhibition had a rather festive and jocular tone. If Calibán was a reflection on Puerto Rican situation, why everything around appeared to be a festival when it is well known that the country faces a form of U.S. colonisation that introduced economic and social challenges: both in the big scale and the everyday life of the people. What Reyes Franco demonstrated with her curatorship was a huge amount of apathy towards the ‘Calibanes’ while celebrating his reality without pointing it out, without criticizing it. Also, we can recognize in the selection, an affirmation and appropriation of León de la Barra’s conceptual and aesthetical proposal for contemporary art in Puerto Rico—pretending to be political without any compromise or sympathy. Just like in the Gran Bienal, the curatorship bent towards a mimicking joke aesthetic.
De un pájaro las dos alas by Karlo Andrei Ibarra
Another curator included in the second volume of the Bienal was Radamés ‘Juni’ Figueroa. ‘Juni’ is a renowned Puerto Rican Artist and part-time curator. Recently in 2019 he curated the exhibition I’m not drunk at the independent exhibition space ‘km 0.2’. ‘Juni’ seems cheekier about the Puerto Rican contemporary art subject matter than Reyes Franco, more fresco (cooler), as his chest tattoo celebrates. In his show, again we see a parading of the ‘Tropical artists’, including a work from Pablo León de la Barra (the handmade poster that he created for the 2011 Gran Bienal). If there was a purpose behind this exhibition besides celebrating the ‘curator’s’ birthday with three local DJs, it still unclear, since so far no one has found any explanatory document about it, and the show itself did not provide any coherence. What we do know is that the invitation motivated more than thirty artists, both local and international, to participate. It even counted with the participation of artists with long career trajectories (like José Luis Vargas) and well-established artists (such as Ángel Otero).
I’m not Drunk by Héctor Madera
To understand the exhibition just imagine you are entering a gallery where there is a column of seven pizza boxes ‘making reference’ to Donald Judd, then you find a shelf with two bubble bath booms like sculpture with the shape of a hamburger, a neon sign of a fat Michael Jordan, and you go on, and on, and at the end, as a conclusion, you see three ‘paintings’ that read “Ha! Ha! Ha!” That was I’m not drunk: three laughs in the Empire language in a country that closed around 300 schools in 2018 because of the Austerity Economy imposed by the US government. Rather than try to reach some conclusion by evaluating the work that was presented—we can just deduce that it was no more than a fairly well-organized chill out.
With I’m not drunk, we witness again in Puerto Rico a nonsense exhibition (of which we can count dozens) in the distinctive style of Pablo León de la Barra. We also recognize the management of the mediocrity, the lack of proposal and the exaltation of the struggle in the language of the ‘Tropical’: poorly made colourful works without purpose or intentions.
Work by Bobby Cruz and Bikismo
After more than sixty decades of the first São Paulo Biennial, we can say that Latin American Art found its space in the context of the ‘Big Art World Circuit’, but we can also reclaim and question the ‘space’ provided and the benefits that this section of the world receives as compensation. If we use the Gran Bienal ‘phenomena’ for example we cannot help ourselves but to think that the Puerto Rican art scene is used as a playing field for the career development of powerful foreign curators and their networks. Gran Bienal Tropical is a Pablo León de la Barra project for Pablo León de la Barra’s career development, and as Curator of the Guggenheim Museum for the Latin American phase of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, probably a part of their agenda. We should not forget that UBS is responsible for producing Puerto Rican’s over $74 billion debt, being the manager for half of the Puerto Rico wealth. We could even think in this contest, the Gran Bienal as a hand wash for the financial institution.
If everything mentioned above is not outrageous enough, let’s just remember which section of the country they selected to play their game. They selected a very culturally rich community and stepped it back as background for their insensitive grimace. And what did they give in return? Nothing! They pop up one day, enjoy the Piñones beach and weather, smoke their weed, pack and go, for as they mentioned: Gran Bienal is an exhibition that ‘fits in the trunk of a car’. This is the effrontery of colonial curatorship. And how we Puerto Ricans (non-Loizeños) sanction this feat: laughing! We, the colonized, try to look good to the oppressors and look as good as them.
Another concern that this dynamic brought relates to the position of the Puerto Rican Cultural Institutions, if any. At present, the Cultural Institute faces the same economic facts that the rest of the sectors of the country faces: the payment of a debt. However, unlike other agencies, ‘culture’ is not a priority for the debt administrators, so many installations of the institute remain closed indeterminately (including the National Gallery), and all of their possessions are on the risk of being sold, including obviously hundreds of art pieces. And, what about the San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Engraving? Well, it ‘evolved’ to become Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan, América Latina y El Caribe. The change occurred in 2003, and its purpose was to “promotes the experimental contemporary practices”. Last year (2018) was the turn for its fifth edition, but of course it was cancelled for the lack of sufficient funds. Just as with Loiza, the art and culture in Puerto Rico is abandoned to its own luck. And its luck is being the exploitation by the foreign private and individual interests of a forsaken field—among his saviours’ parade characters as Leon de la Barra.
Through the historical review of the Latin American Biennials ‘phenomena’ we can discover their aim of becoming part of the ‘Big Art World Circuit’. We can also recognize how Latin América, and in this specific case Puerto Rico, has been used rather as a playfield of foreign individuals career developments, individuals who in turn impose their concepts and aesthetics shamelessly, and, are backed up by the local art circuit that applaud their exploits and reproduce their systems in their own contexts. The Gran Bienal Tropical proposed a celebration of the Puerto Rican struggle, and yet such colonisation was embraced and is reproduced by Puerto Ricans. It introduced apathy in the Puerto Rican art contemporary discourse towards the actual social-economic situation of the country, and the adoption of the ‘tropical’, colourful, banal and mediocre conceptual and aesthetical approaches proposed by foreign curator Pablo León de la Barra.
Bibliography
Barnitz, Jacqueline. “New Museums, The São Paulo Biennial, and Abstract Art.” Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, by Jacqueline Barnitz, University of Texas Pr., 2001, pp. 143–165.
Bayón, Damián. “Comentarios a la Cuarta Bienal de Grabado.” Plástica. San Juan, Puerto Rico, no. 4, 1979, p.4-5.
Feliciano, Héctor. “Ausente una defensa clara de los patrimonio culturales y naturales”. El Nuevo Día. 2019.
León de la Barra, Pablo. “1st Gran Bienal Tropical, ‘Trópico Abierto’ curated by Pablo León de la Barra at La Comai in San Juan, Puerto Rico”. Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. La loseta. 2011. Accessed 4 Apr. 2019.
Molina, Alejandro. “Caliban: an exhibition of Puerto Rican contemporary artists”. Puerto Rican Cultural Center. 2015. prcc- chgo.org/2015/03/24/caliban-an-exhibition-of-puerto-rican-contemporary-artists/. Accessed 20 Apr. 2019.
Universes in Universe. “Trienal Poli/Gráfica De San Juan”. Universes in Universe –Worlds of Art, universes.art/es/trienal-poli-grafica-de-san-juan/. Accessed 20 Apr. 2019.
USA, Data. “Loíza Municipio, PR.” Data USA, 2017, datausa.io/profile/geo/lo%C3%ADza-municipio-pr/#about. Accessed 20 Apr. 2019.
Velázquez Collazo, Edwin. “Suspendida indefinidamente la 5ta Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan – Puerto Rico”. Puerto Rico Art News. 2018. puertoricoartnews.com/2018/10/suspendida-indefinidamente-5ta-trienal.html. Accessed 21 Apr. 2019.
Apendix
Gran Bienal Tropical 2011
Jesús Bubu Negrón
Rainbow by Radamés ‘Juni’ Figueroa
Fake Allora & Calzadilla palm fan
Johnny La Gente Esta Muy Loca by Adriana Lara
Gran Bienal Tropical 2016
Isla Coca by Coca Colective
Ponchos Anti Zika by Jessica Kaire
Calibán
El Nuevo horizonte by Radamés ‘Juni’ Figueroa
De un pájaro las dos alas by Karlo Andrei Ibarra
I’m not Drunk
Work by Héctor Madera
Work by Bobby Cruz and Bikismo
New Minds Eye 