Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora

Derived from Spanish for “back-and-forth movement,” vaivén is most associated with the supposed ease at which Puerto Ricans migrate between the US and Puerto Rico. Beyond the comings and goings of travel, this word invokes something much more profound, naming decades of physical, cultural, and emotional ebb and flow that has resulted in more persons of Puerto Rican descent living across the fifty United States than in Puerto Rico itself. To be “of Puerto Rico” is to be inextricably linked with diaspora, Black and Caribbean epistemologies, and a constant reimagining of home and belonging. In response, Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora gathers forty-three artists whose work bears witness to a quarter century of cultural, political, and migratory oscillations, while challenging dominant cultural narratives of “island” post-disaster resiliency versus “mainland” diasporic neither-here-nor-there identity. By tracing conceptual and aesthetic intersections across a range of approaches to image- and mark-making, sculpture and installation, and sound and video, artists in the exhibition explore the hybridity of memory, language, place, and ancestral knowledge as they relate to acts of witnessing, resistance, and connection. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue document new constellations of artists who challenge geographic and cultural authenticity, racialization, and classism, that have shaped which voices define Puerto Rican contemporary art, and which continue to be devalued.

The exhibition is organized by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, operated by the Department of Art, in association with Hidrante, San Juan. A fully illustrated bilingual English and Spanish accompanying catalogue includes contributions from Arlene Dávila, Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, Teréz Iacovino, María Elena Ortiz, José López Serra, Carlos Ortiz Burgos, and Monica Uszerowicz. Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora is made possible by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts, the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund, and Ann and Michael G. Hofkin.