“Taller Boricua (Puerto Rican Workshop) 1969

“Taller Boricua (Puerto Rican Workshop) 1969 - Present” Exhibition

WHITE BOX

This event has ended.

El Taller Boricua, (Puerto Rican workshop) From Art Workers Coalition to the Present, curated by Yohanna M Roa. The exhibition gives full parity and voice to the women creators of the workshop, presenting a refreshing panoramic view of the Workshop’s 50-year history, which reveals the volume and complexity of their artistic production and the depth of their socio-cultural activism. The legacy of the Taller Boricua workshop is directly linked to the struggle against the socio-historical conditions and problems intrinsic to the NYC cultural and social context. It is an ongoing archival exhibition, as after 50 years, their work methodologies have been transformed along with their life stories. Join us at the opening reception and hear four outstanding women poets read live: Lois Elaine Griffith, Diana Gitesha Hernández, Juana Ramos and Margarita Drago.

Taller Boricua emerged in East Harlem within the cultural landscape of New York City in 1969, alongside the artistic effervescence that took place Downtown, particularly in SoHo, Tribeca, and the Lower East Side. Their objective was to activate, through art, processes of social resistance in frequently neglected, underserved communities. From their inception, they have been part of the Nuyorican movement that originated in the late 1960s in neighborhoods like Loisaida, Williamsburg, and East Harlem aka El Barrio; visual artists, writers, especially poets, and musicians converged in El Taller (The Workshop), where prints, Spoken Word and Salsa developed within the environment of Latin American culture, today deeply rooted in New York.

El Taller Boricua (The Boricua Puerto Rican Workshop), From the Art Workers Coalition to the Present, is the first exhibition in the “New York Artscapes” series in which WhiteBox is creating a platform to welcome and make visible cultural processes that have fundamentally constituted the cultural landscape of this city but dwell outside the hegemonic discourse due to race, gender, and/or social class. The show presents a panoramic view of the 50-year history of the Workshop, which reveals the volume and complexity of their artistic production directly linked to the social and historical problems of their community. It is an ongoing archival exhibition because it is understandable that after 50 years of uninterrupted work, their work methodologies have been transformed along with their own life stories. Thus, our pondering over New York City’s storied past is quite different now than in 1969.

In New York, the 1970s were characterized by the growing activism within the artistic movement; in May 1970, those the artists demonstrated in the commonly known “Art Strike” against racism, sexism, repression, and the Vietnam War. Likewise, artists based in the city began questioning the essence of art, transforming how contemporary art was created and exhibited, seeking to push the limits of the white cube. For its part, Taller Boricua has worked from what is known today as “insurgent aesthetics.”[1], where their artistic practices are defined as collective, relational, and situated; therefore, they are an expansive form of manifestation against extant forms of domination. Their trajectory reveals their resistance to racial and social class violence exerted on the non-white population, especially upon the Puerto Rican population in New York City.

The Workshop was founded by the artists Marcos Dimas, Adrián García, Manuel Otero, Armando Soto, and Martín Rubio, who in parallel were linked to the AWC movement (The Art Workers Coalition), where (among various statements) museums were required to become more open and less exclusive regarding exhibition policy regarding when working with the artists they exhibited and promoted. One year after the founding of Toleration, the community of Latin American visual artists, writers, and musicians, especially Puerto Ricans, had expanded: Nitza Tufiño, Ada Soto, Carlos Osorio, Olga Alemán, Rafael Tufiño, Dylcia Pagan, Edwin Pitre, Julius Perri, Juan Gonzales, Bobby Ortiz, Jimmy Jiménez, Abdías Gonzales, Sammy Tanco y Vitin Linares, among others. Early on, they had the vision of developing programs that revolved around the reclaiming of Puerto Rican roots, including the rescue of the Taino past and processes of social and educational resistance in schools and public spaces in East Harlem, direct links with the socio-political activist group The Young Lords, support for families of young people killed by the police and dissemination of Nuyorican cultural production.

The exhibition includes three bodies of work: the current archive of the Taller Boricua, with photographic and film documentation, letters, posters, publications, and clippings, while at the same time offering an account of the extensive activities and transdisciplinary work such as exhibitions, poetry readings, concerts and, dances. Art produced in the workshop included prints, silkscreens, woodcuts, and various new printing techniques. The exhibition highlights the work of female visual artists and writers linked to the workshop: Esperanza Cortés, Stephanie S. Lee, Nitza Tufiño, Lori Horowitz, Lina Puerta, y Ellen Alt. At the same time, as part of upcoming public programs, we have a select group of powerful women poets to give live readings: Lois Elaine Griffith, Diana Gitesha Hernández, Juana Ramos, y Margarita Drago. We also have alongside the video screening premiere of “The Puerto Rican Obituary, Pedro Pietri” by Jorge Lozano, who documented the poet in his last years through the streets of New York City, to be shown daily.

Taller Boricua, from Art Workers Coalition to the Present, avoids the abstraction of historical constructions that are commonly used and make systematic violence invisible, and in this way, the exhibition relocates in bodies and memories the experiences of the vast Latin American population in this city. The show seeks to make evident the process through which racial, social, and gender stratification has historically built a cultural landscape wherein those people of color, those bodies that know how to move to the rhythm of the drums, seem distant and alien. The work of Taller Boricua reminds us that in fact, they are familiar and intimate; they are the heartbeat of New York City’s vibrant life and remarkable history.