Taller Boricua – From Art Workers coalition to the Present
Piel es – It Is Skyn
5 September, 2023
Swiss Institute NY
19 October, 2023
Yohanna M. Roa, curator
Taller Boricua emerged in East Harlem within the cultural landscape of New York City in 1969, alongside the artistic effervescence that took place in SoHo, Tribeca, and the Lower East Side. Their objective was to activate, through art, processes of social resistance in frequently neglected communities. From the beginning, they have been part of the Nuyorican movement that originated in the late 1960s in neighborhoods like Loisaida, Williamsburg, and East Harlem; Visual artists, writers, especially poets and musicians converged in El Taller (The Workshop), where prints, Spoken Word and Salsa developed within Latin American culture, today rooted in New York.
El Taller Boricua (The Boricua Workshop), From the Art Workers Coalition to the Present, is the first exhibition of the “New York Artscapes” series, in which WhiteBox is the platform to make visible cultural processes that have fundamentally constituted the cultural landscape of the city and are outside the hegemonic discourse, due to to the condition of race, gender, and 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 the context. 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 life stories. Thus, our ponder on New York City’s storied past is different now than in 1969.
In New York, the 1970s were characterized by the activism of the artistic movement; in May 1970, the artists demonstrated in the commonly known “Art Strike” against racism, sexism, repression, and 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.” , where their artistic practices are defined as collective, relational, and situated; therefore, they are an expansive form of manifestation against the forms of domination. Their trajectory reveals their resistance to racial and social class violence exerted on the non-white population, especially 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 more open and less exclusive exhibition policy regarding the artists they exhibited and promoted. One year after the foundation, 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, links with 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 giving an account of the extensive activities and transdisciplinary work: exhibitions, poetry readings, concerts, dances. Art produced in the workshop like Prints, silkscreen, woodcuts, and various new printing techniques. The exhibition highlights the work of the women 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, we invited a group of powerful women poets to give readings: Lois Elaine Griffith, Diana Gitesha Hernández, Juana Ramos, y Margarita Drago. We also have the video premiere “The Puerto Rican Obituary, Pedro Pietri” by Jorge Lozano, who documented the poet in his last years through the streets of New York.
Taller Boricua, from Art Workers Coalition to the Present, avoids the abstraction of historical constructions that are commonly used and makes systematic violence invisible, and in this way, does not allow locating in bodies and memories the experiences of the construction and rooting of the broad Latin American population in the city. This exhibition seeks to make evident the process by which an idea has been built in which racial, social, and gender stratification has historically built a cultural landscape in which those of color, those bodies that know how to move to the rhythm of the drums, seem distant and alien, when in fact they are familiar and intimate and are the heartbeat of New York City life and history.
