Imna Arroyo

Last updated
Imna Arroyo
Born1951
Guayama, Puerto Rico

Imna Arroyo is a Puerto Rican artist. Her work is centered on printmaking and painting, particularly around the theme of "energia de mujeres", or "women's energy". [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Arroyo was born in 1951 in Guayama, Puerto Rico [2] and attended the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico as an honors student in 1966. She graduated in 1967 and enrolled at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico where she studied under Frank Cerbonie, Rafael Tufiño, Luis Hernández Cruz and Susana Herero. After the death of her mother in 1973, Arroyo moved to New York and studied at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 1977 with a B.F.A. and then studying at the printmaking department at Yale University's School of Art, where she was a student of Gabor Peterdi, Winefred Lutz, Greta Campbell, Elizabeth Murray and Samia Halaby. [3] [4]

Career

Following her graduation from Yale, Arroyo moved to New York University where she worked in printmaking with Krishna Reddy. She was awarded a Ford Foundation Teaching Grant in the same year, and an Artist Project Grant by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in 1980. In 1982 she began exploring the theme of "energia de mujeres", or "women's energy", inspired by her experience of women within her family and heritage; this continues to be her primary artistic theme. [1] From 1996 to 1993, Arroyo served as Commissioner of the Commission of Cultural Affairs of New Haven, and was a Women in Leadership Honoree. In 1987, she was awarded the Merit Award of South Central Community College, and in 1994, the Professional Development Award of Eastern Connecticut State University, where she's currently a Professor of Art and chairs the Visual Arts Department. [5]

In 1990 Arroyo completed her series Moving Through the Spiral, a collection of paintings and lithographs influenced by her visits to Mexico and New Mexico. [6] Other prominent exhibitions and series include Time, Movement and Symbolism at the Akus Gallery and Charter Oak Cultural Center in 1995, and participation in a group exhibit at the 14th General Assembly and Congress of the UNESCO International Association of Art, also in 1995. [7] In 2000 she created Voices of Water with Lillian Pitt, Gail Tremblay and Betsy Damon; this was then exhibited at the CESTA Festival. [8] The same year, she collaborated with Arto Lindsay on Santuario para les animas Africanas (Sanctuary for the [Tortured] African Souls), which was exhibited in the ruins of the Iglesia Santo Domingo in Panama City. [9] In 2011 Arroyo served as the Master Artist-in-Residence at Spelman College. [10] In 2012 she was awarded the Outstanding Latino Cultural Award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. [2] [5]

Her most recent exhibition was "Ancestors of the Passage" at the University of Connecticut. [5] The exhibition consisted of an installation "composed of 27 terracotta ceramic figures, each extending their hands out to the audience from a sea of acrylic canvases and silk fabric. According to the artist, these figures represent the African ancestors who died in the Middle Passage, where millions of people were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World." [5] "The figures are surrounded by 47 black and white collagraphs which feature two-dimensional images similar to the sculptures and a projected video titled “Trail of Bones.” Finally, there is an altar to pay tribute to the ancestors and allow audience members to write on small prints to their ancestors.Through the variety of media, Arroyo works not to simply condemn historical oppressors, but to express her own identity and honor those who made her life possible through their struggles." [11]

"Arroyo called her work “timely” because of how it intertwined historical, political, social, environmental and even personal issues into one conversation. She mentions how climate change is impacting sea levels and then she connects it to Puerto Rico, where people have been living for months with inadequate resources including a lack of potable water. She took these broad issues and used them in her work to discuss deeper issues.

“It’s concerned about not only what’s happening with the environment, but also the displacement of people from their places, refugees. We might not want to acknowledge that we have refugees dealing with climate change and that’s one of our realities of our time,” Arroyo said.

Arroyo also stressed the importance of exchange in her work. Through the physical set-up of the piece and the interaction altar, she emphasizes the importance of the exchange and of conversation. However, firsthand experience is crucial to conveying this authentically." [11]

Personal life

While living in Puerto Rico, Arroyo married Tito Efrain Mattei and had two daughters, Isis and Swahili. She left her husband before moving to the United States, but later remarried him and they had a third child, a son. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzanne Duchamp</span> French painter

Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti was a French Dadaist painter, collagist, sculptor, and draughtsman. Her work was significant to the development of Paris Dada and modernism and her drawings and collages explore fascinating gender dynamics. Due to the fact that she was a woman in the male prominent Dada movement, she was rarely considered an artist in her own right. She constantly lived in the shadows of her famous older brothers, who were also artists, or she was referred to as "the wife of." Her work in painting turns out to be significantly influential to the landscape of Dada in Paris and to the interests of women in Dada. She took a large role as an avant-garde artist, working through a career that spanned five decades, during a turbulent time of great societal change. She used her work to express certain subject matter such as personal concerns about modern society, her role as a modern woman artist, and the effects of the First World War. Her work often weaves painting, collage, and language together in complex ways.

Jan D'Esopo is a painter and sculptor, mainly active in Puerto Rico.

María de Mater O'Neill is a Puerto Rican artist, designer and educator.

Zilia Sánchez Dominguez is a Puerto Rico-based Cuban artist from Havana. She started her career as a set designer and an abstract painter for theatre groups in Cuba before the Cuban revolution of 1953-59. Sanchez blurs the lines between sculpture and painting by creating canvases layered with three dimensional protrusions and shapes. Her works are minimal in color, and have erotic overtones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gladys Triana</span> Cuban-American visual artist

Gladys Triana is a Cuban-American visual artist. Triana's career as an artist has spanned nearly six decades and includes works on paper, paintings, sculpture, mixed-media collage, installations, and photography. Triana currently resides in New York City and is still actively creating artwork.

Alicia Candiani is an Argentine artist specializing in printmaking and digital media. She is an active participant in the international printmaking community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro</span> Puerto Rican writer (born 1970)

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is a Puerto Rican novelist, short story writer and essayist.

Rosa Tavarez was a Dominican painter and engraver.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vilma G. Holland</span> Puerto Rican visual artist

Vilma Isabel Gonzalez Cordova Holland was a Puerto Rican visual artist.

Cristina Córdova is an American-born, Puerto Rican sculptor who works and lives in Penland, North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deyanira África Melo</span> Mexican sculptor

Deyanira África González Melo is a Mexican sculptor who generally works in ceramics, depicting elements of the human form, especially the torso, generally with mutilations and other disturbing elements to dispute the otherwise traditional and sensual depictions of the human body. She has exhibited her work since studying at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP) in Mexico as well as in Europe and the Caribbean. Her work has received recognition in Mexico and abroad, and is a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

Nayda Collazo-Llorens is a visual artist whose work spans drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, video, and public art. Her work combines images, sound, and text to investigate how the mind processes information. While themes of displacement, alienation, and synchronicity permeate her videos and interventions, her text-based works explore post-alphabetic communication, hyperconnectivity and “noise” as systems of information. Collazo-Llorens is the granddaughter of the Puerto Rican literary critic, linguist, and lexicographer, Washington Llorens. Though born and raised in Puerto Rico, she attended college and graduate school in the United States, receiving her BFA in printmaking and graphic design from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1990 and her MFA from New York University in 2002. She has taught at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University School of Art, Kalamazoo College, and, from fall 2014 to spring 2017, held the position of Stuart and Barbara Padnos Distinguished Artist in Residence at Grand Valley State University.

Carmen Castilleja is a Mexican photographer whose work has been received several awards and a member of Mexico's Salón de la Plástica Mexicana

Rita Keegan is an American-born artist, lecturer and archivist, based in England since the late 1970s. She is a multi-media artist whose work uses video and digital technologies. Keegan is best known for her involvement with in the UK's Black Arts Movement in the 1980s and her work documenting artists of colour in Britain.

Miriam Medina de Zamparelli is a sculptor of the generation of 1980, renowned for her wood projects. She was an active member of the Association of Women Artists of Puerto Rico.

Anaida Hernández is a Puerto Rican sculptor, painter, installation artist, muralist, documentary director, and businesswoman. She was an active member of the Association of Women Artists of Puerto Rico and is considered as being a pioneer in addressing violence against women via contemporary Caribbean and Latin American art.

Maritza Dávila is a Latin American artist born in Puerto Rico in 1952. Dávila is currently a professor at Memphis College of Art in Tennessee, where she has taught printmaking since 1982.

Bibiana Suárez is a Latin American artist from Puerto Rico. She specializes in painting with mixed media. Her work reflects the immigrant experience of a search for self-identification and the problems of living on the edge between two cultures. Suárez's art pieces are representative of culture, social, and political dynamics.

Patricia Torres, known as Patricia Torres is a Mexican artist. She uses different forms of visual expression, such as painting, drawing, printmaking, multimedia pieces and video. The themes in her work are related to the female body, its acceptance and the interventions that are made to normalize it, to ensure that it is accepted and valued in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzi Ferrer</span> American contemporary feminist visual artist

Suzi Ferrer (born Susan Nudelman, also known as Sasha Ferrer, was a visual artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico from the mid-1960s to 1975. She is known for her transgressive, irreverent, avant-garde, art brut and feminist work.

References

  1. 1 2 Chiarmonte 1990, p. 135.
  2. 1 2 "Biography – Imna Arroyo | Art and Art History | Eastern Connecticut State University" . Retrieved 2019-04-29.
  3. ↑ Farris, Phoebe (1999). Women Artists of Color: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook to 20th Century Artists in the Americas . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. pp.  131. ISBN   0-313-30374-6.
  4. 1 2 Chiarmonte 1990, p. 131.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Singh, Vikram (2018-05-14). "Ancestors of the Passage: Works by Imna Arroyo | Art Gallery" . Retrieved 2019-04-29.
  6. ↑ Chiarmonte 1990, p. 136.
  7. ↑ Chiarmonte 1990, p. 133.
  8. ↑ Ressler 2003, p. 337.
  9. ↑ Meskimmon & Davies 2003, p. 153.
  10. ↑ "Master Artist-in-Residence". Spellman College. Archived from the original on 20 January 2011. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  11. 1 2 Taylor, Alexis (2018-02-16). "Imna Arroyo's work is a medium for change". The Daily Campus. Retrieved 2020-03-06.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.