Ni de aqui, ni de alla—neither from here or there. This is something you might hear on the streets of Puerto Rico as people consider what it means to be both citizens of the United States and colonized subjects of an antiquated political system. This year, Puerto Rico had the largest bankruptcy case in the history of the American market. The island’s total debt, according[…..]

Lionel Cruet is preoccupied by the idea of place. Much of his work explores how one can attempt to access the places in which one is not physically present, and questions if these attempts can ever be successful. Of particular concern to Cruet is how race and geopolitical status factor into these attempts—how one’s described and prescribed identities render access to, and denial from, a[…..]

As an exhibition of contemporary Puerto Rican artists, one might be tempted to hypothesize that Paraíso, on view this month at ltd los angeles, is meant to express a quintessentially Puerto Rican attitude, or perhaps act as homage to the land itself.  What’s primarily on display, however, is a state of mind: one shared by quite a few 21st-century contemporary artists, regardless of nationality.  In[…..]

Chicago artist Josue Pellot deploys several mediums and styles in order to examine his Puerto Rican roots as transplanted into the quintessential American experience – that is, as mediated by pop culture and consumerism in his current exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Thus, he displays a photomontage of the iconic fortress El Morro in Puerto Rico in which it is conflated with a supermercado/laundromat/liquor[…..]