Nuyorican and Diasporican Visual Art

Arlene Dávila is Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at New York University and author, most recently, of Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics, also published by Duke University Press. Yasmin Ramirez is Adjunct Professor of Art at the City College of New York and an independent curator who has collaborated with The Bronx Museum, El Museo del Barrio, and Taller Boricua, among others.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction / Arlene Dávila and Yasmin Ramirez  1
Part I. From Puerto Rican to Nuyorican Forging Diasporican Art in New York
1. The Way Out=Left Out? Paradoxes of Puerto Rican Avant-Garde Art / Melissa M. Ramos Borges  27
2. Nuyorican Vanguards: The Puerto Rican Alternative Art Space Movement in New York / Yasmin Ramirez  45
3. The Construction of Nuyorican Identity in the Art of Taller Bouricua / Taína Caragol  70
4. The Politics and Poetics of Máximo Colón’s Activist Photography / Elizabeth Ferrer  90
5. Artistic Decoloniality as Aesthetic Praxis: Making and Transforming Imaginations and Communities in NYC / Wilson Valentín-Escobar  104
6. The Art of Survival: The Visual Art Activism of Maria Dominguez / Al Hoyos-Twomey  131
7. The Parallel Aesthetics of Nilda Peraza / Néstor David Pastor  149
8. Creative Camaraderie: Puerto Rican / Nuyorican Artists and Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop / Deborah Cullen-Morales  167
Part II. Diasporican Sites Reports from the Field
9. Unpacking the Portmanteau: Locating Diasporican Art / Teréz Iacovino  189
10. Puerto Rican Arts in Philadelphia: Una Perla Boricua en Filadelfia / Johnny Irizarry  212
11. “A pesar de todo”: The Survival of an Afro-Puerto Rican Family in Frank Espada’s Puerto Rican Diaspora Project / Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez  233
12. The Fight to Make Art in Borilando / Raquel Reichard  250
13. Abstractions between Puerto Rico and Chicago: An Ongoing Conversation about Nationalism and Nonprepresentational Art / Abdiel D. Segarra Ríos  270
Part III. All of the Above: Diasporican Aesthetics
14. Nuyorican Poets’ Art of Making Books / Urayoán Noel  291
15. Visual Artists, Surrealist Communions: Lois Elaine Griffith and Jorge Soto Sánchez at the Nuyorican Poets Café / Joseph Anthony Cácares  311
16. “SAMO© . . . AS AN EPIC POEM WITH FLAMES”: Al Díaz’s Poetics of Disruption / Rojo Robles  329
17. ¡No te luzcas! Nuyorican Performance and Spectacularity in the Visual Art of Adál, David Antonio Cruz, and Luis Carle / Arnaldo M. Cruz-Malavé  352
18.  “Bridging Gaps and Building Communities”: Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz’s Ask Chuleta and Afro-Latinx Identity beyond the “White Box” / Kerry Doran  372
19. A Modernist Nuyorican Casita and the Aesthetics of Gentrification / Johana Londoño  393
Conclusion. The Spatial Politics of Shellyne Rodriguez, Rigoberto Torres, Lee Quiñones, and Daniella De Jesus—With Some Concluding Comments / Arlene Dávila  407
Contributors  427
Index  435