Papo Colo

Last updated

Papo Colo (born August 12, 1946) is a Puerto Rican performance artist, painter, writer, and curator. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He lives and works in New York City and in El Yunque rainforest in Puerto Rico. Papo Colo is an interdisciplinary artist, whose work ranges from performance, theater and installation art to painting, writing, and graphic design.

Contents

Early life and career

At 18 he left natal Puerto Rico as a merchant marine. After returning to the island in 1971, he falsified a diploma from the University of Puerto Rico as his first conceptual art piece. [1] In New York he studied under the tutelage of the poet Nicanor Parra at Columbia University. His interest in pre-Columbian and Latin American cultures led him to travel across Mexico for a year. From 1973 through 1980 he lived and worked between New York City and Barcelona. During these years he did a series of performances involving physical endurance with political undertones. He is best known for Superman 51, which consisted of the artist running with 51 blocks tied to his back on the West Side Highway until exhaustion. His father, Francisco Colon Garcia, [2] [3] was a boxing champion and his exposure to the glorification of the body through boxing was influential to his work.

Exit Art

In 1982 Papo Colo, with Jeanette Ingberman, founded Exit Art, [4] [5] an internationally known cultural center in New York City. In 1992 he founded the Trickster Theater, an experimental multilingual and multicultural theater company. [6] [7] The company served as an integral part of Exit Art's discourse and was held on the lower level of its facilities. In 2005 he wrote and directed Mplay, a theater piece created solely for the web. He has won numerous awards including The New York Times Best Inaugural Show by an Alternative Art Space for his exhibition Exit Biennial: Reconstruction [8] Additionally, REACTIONS, an international response to 9/11 conceived by Papo Colo, was acquired by The Library of Congress for its permanent collection [9] Jeanette Ingberman died August 24, 2011, from complications of leukemia.

Career as an artist

Besides being the curator and cultural producer of Exit Art, Papo Colo has organized over 100 shows in which he was also the exhibition and graphic designer. His work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including The Clocktower (2013), Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco and MoMA PS1, New York (both 2009), El Museo del Barrio (2008), National Gallery of Puerto Rico (2007), Grey Art Gallery (2006), Art in General (2006), RISD Museum, Providence (2005), Barnes Foundation (2017), Band the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2001). The retrospective of his early work at MoMA PS1, which was organized by Klaus Biesenbach, coincided with The Cleaner, a new work the artist performed in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, and culminated with the performance event Procesión Migración that reflected on the constant Puerto Rican migration to the mainland. The artist is establishing Pangea Art Republic, a new alternative art space in El Yunque Rainforest. [10]

Selected exhibitions

Solo

Group

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuyorican movement</span> Cultural movement for Puerto Ricans living in or near New York City in the late 1960s / early 1970s

The Nuyorican movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans. It originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in neighborhoods such as Loisaida, East Harlem, Williamsburg, and the South Bronx as a means to validate Puerto Rican experience in the United States, particularly for poor and working-class people who suffered from marginalization, ostracism, and discrimination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodolfo Abularach</span> Guatemalan painter and printmaker (1933–2020)

Rodolfo Abularach was a Guatemalan painter and printmaker of Palestinian descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galería de la Raza</span>

Galería de la Raza (GDLR) is a non-profit art gallery and artist collective founded in 1970, that serves the largely Chicano and Latino population of San Francisco's Mission District. GDLR mounts exhibitions, hosts poetry readings, workshops, and celebrations, sells works of art, and sponsors youth and artist-in-residence programs. Exhibitions at the Galería tend to feature the work of minority and developing country artists and concern issues of ethnic history, identity, and social justice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhode Island School of Design Museum</span> Art & design museum in Rhode Island

The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the United States, and has seven curatorial departments.

Vicente Dopico Lerner was a Cuban painter. Dopico Lerner also wrote on Latin American art and was the director of the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture in Miami.

Rafael Trelles is a postmodern artist from Puerto Rico.

Francisco Rovira Rullán is an art dealer, active from a young age. He has worked for the Ronald S. Lauder Collection (NYC), in the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston) and M&M Proyectos among other institutions and companies.

Exit Art was a non-profit cultural center that ran from 1982 to 2012 that exhibited contemporary visual art, installation, video, theater, and performance in New York City, United States. In its last location in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, it was a two-story gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Žilvinas Kempinas</span> Lithuanian visual artist

Žilvinas Kempinas is a contemporary visual artist. He lives and works in New York City.

Jungil Hong, also known as Jung-li Hong, is a Korean-American artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. She is best known for her psychedelic, cartoon-inspired silkscreen poster art and paintings. More recently she has expanded into textiles.

Sofia Maldonado is a Puerto Rican contemporary artist. She lives and works between New York City and Puerto Rico. Maldonado has collaborated with the Nuyorican Movement.

Juan Sánchez, also Juan Sanchez is an American artist and educator. He is an important Nuyorican cultural figure to emerge in the second half of the 20th century. His works include photography, paintings and mixed media works.

Arnaldo Morales is a Puerto Rico-born, New York-based artist who creates interactive, mechanical sculptures using recycled and fabricated industrial materials.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is an artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work combines aspects of ethnography and theater to create film and video projects that have touched on subjects including anarchist communities, the relationship between artwork and work, and post-military land. Her work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial 2017, Galería Kurimanzutto, and the Guggenheim Museum. She is co-founder of Beta-Local, an art organization and experimental education program in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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.

Alia Farid is a Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican visual artist. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Visual Arts Program at MIT, Cambridge, MA, and a Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Critical Theory from the Programa d’Estudis Independents at MACBA, Barcelona. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include In Lieu of What Was at Portikus, Frankfurt and Alia Farid, a solo exhibition at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Recent and upcoming group shows include participation in the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, the 12th Gwangju Biennale, Sharjah Biennial 14, the 2nd Lahore Biennale, and Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2001 at MoMA PS1. In Switzerland, she first exhibited her new three bodies of artwork from February 11- to May 2022. She installed different water bottles in Kunsthalle Basel and found textile harnesses there. Farid is participating in the 2022 Whitney Biennial titled "Quiet as It's Kept" curated by Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin.

Elba Damast was a Venezuelan artist.

Rolando Castellón, also known as Rolando Dionisio Castellón-Alegria is a Nicaraguan American painter, author, art historian, and curator. He was a well-known contributor to the arts of San Francisco, California and he has lived in Costa Rica since 2013.

<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. ↑ ""I Am an Invented Character": A Performance Artist on Living in His Utopia". Hyperallergic. 2016-08-24. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
  2. ↑ Torres, Juan. "Peleas del boxeador Francisco Colón García" . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  3. ↑ "Francisco Colon Garcia - BoxRec" . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  4. ↑ Gomez, Edward M. (16 April 2000). "ART/ARCHITECTURE; An Offbeat Outpost Attains Longevity And Ponders Why" . Retrieved 14 April 2017– via NYTimes.com.
  5. ↑ C.Carr (11 March 2003). "Every Exit Is an Entrance" . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  6. ↑ "Trickstertheater.org" . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  7. ↑ "Trickster Theater". YouTube . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  8. ↑ Smith, Roberta (28 December 2003). "ART: THE HIGHS; The Art and Artists Of the Year". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  9. ↑ "Exit Art's "Reactions" Exhibition Collection - Rights and Restrictions Information (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress)". Library of Congress . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  10. ↑ "MoMA PS1: Exhibitions: Papo Colo" . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  11. ↑ "Galería de la Raza: Digital Mural Project: Papo Colo" . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  12. ↑ "Island Nations RISD Museum of Art Providence" . Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  13. ↑ "Grey Art Gallery".
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.