El Museo’s Bienal 2013: HERE IS WHERE WE JUMP
Detail from A Dios (2012) by Edgar Serrano PL and I visited El Museo del Barrio yesterday to see its 7th biennal show. I've been to the museum before, to see a show about the artistic connections between Puerto Rico and New York, but hadn't seen a biennal there. 37 emerging Latino and Latin Americans who live and work in the New York metropolitan area contributed works. As expected, video works and installation pieces dominated, most of which were thin in conception and casual in execution. To display one's process does not necessarily make a successful artwork. The aesthetics by and large felt derivative. But how does one surmount the problem of coming late to the scene? One exceptional installation was that of Hector Arce-Espasas, who is Puerto Rican. On top of haphazardly stacked crates stood ceramic jugs made in the shape of pineapples. On the wall was a blown-up reproduction of George I presented with a pineapple by his gardener. Most of the jugs were cracked ...