Crisis over Crisis: institucionalidad cultural en desequilibrio

Friday, 6 November 2020, 12.30 – 15.00

Webinar – Universidad de Barcelona

Following the founding of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in 1952, the government of the Island has the material and administrative conditions necessary to articulate an institutional machinery that will allow it to organize the Puerto Rican cultural capital. Since then, the cultural institutions on the Island inhabit a space of political and conceptual contradiction. In addition, the climate of economic instability directly linked to the colonial status keeps both museums and other cultural institutions (public and private) in a state of permanent crisis, having to beg annually for their permanence.
This seminar proposes a space to discuss and problematize the current Puerto Rican cultural panorama considering the conditions of its institutions and cultural projects.

Abdiel D. Segarra Ríos is an artist, independent curator and art critic. He researches the effects that the ideological agenda of national revindication has had on the official narrativeof Puerto Rican art history and how this has influenced the development and visibility that the work of Puerto Rican abstract artists has received inside and outside the island. He is co-founder of Sin Norte, an independent publication focused on the dissemination of migrant chronicles in Europe, and collaborates as a cultural manager with Espacio CóMPLICES (Madrid). He directed the Plastic Arts Program of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture and the 4th edition of the Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan, América Latina y el Caribe. He holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art History and Visual Arts (UAM, UCM and MNCARS) and a Master’s degree in Cultural Management and Administration (University of Puerto Rico) and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts (Escuela de Artes Plásticas de San Juan).

To receive the Reader and register for the seminar, please contact MoDe(s): info@modernidadesdescentralizadas.com

Direction: Anita Orzes (Universidad de Barcelona)

Seminar organized in the framework of FPI contract (PRE2018-085848) as well as the research project Decentralized Modernities: Art, Politics and Counterculture in the Transatlantic Axis during the Cold War (HAR2017-82755-P) of the University of Barcelona.
Image: Abdiel D. Segarra Ríos, Desde el fracaso, 2016