Vieques, Puerto Rico. This past December 29, from 3 PM to 6 PM. The Parent Advisory Art Project presented “Naturalness,” a pop-up collective exhibition at the Historic Sugar Mill Ruins of Esperanza, Vieques, Puerto Rico, with works by artists Marco Caridad, Sheila Fraga, Carlos Rivas Gil, and Sandra Reyes.
The exhibition “Naturalness” was the excuse to present contemporary narratives where sensuality, technology, and street culture met in a show that invited us to reflect on the meaning of being oneself and challenge our taboos of stereotypes in this Puerto Rican archipelago where plurality has become every day.
Four Latinx artists comprised the cohort that presents an open-minded set of paintings, drawings, and printmaking. It was about two Vieques residents: Carlos Gil Rivera and Sandra Reyes. As well as Miami-based Cuban artist Shelia Fraga and Venezuelan-born Artist Marco Caridad, who works in Miami but calls La Isla Nena his home seasons of the year. Caridad is also the founder of the Parent Advisory Art Project.
About Vieques and the Historic Sugar Mill Ruins of Esperanza:
- At the beginning of the 16th century, the Spanish managed to wipe out the last of the Taínos on Vieques.
- Hundreds of archaeological sites exist, and many experts feel Vieques hold the key to Caribbean indigenous history.
- In 1816, the Venezuelan general Simón Bolívar, the ‘Great Liberator of the Americas,’ visited Vieques. How much influence he had on the rebellions to come – nobody knows.
- From 1832 to 1843, Vieques was administered by the Frenchman and J.J. Maria Le Guillou, who served as the political and military governor of the Spanish Colony of Vieques.
- Vieques was annexed to Puerto Rico by the Spanish in 1854
- From the 1830s to the 1930s, thousands of workers from Puerto Rico, the British, and the Danish Virgin Islands come to work in Vieques in the initially thriving sugar industry.
- By 1900 the four sugar grinding mills are located at Arcadia, Santa Maria, Esperanza, and Playa Grande.
- The USA Navy closed its Vieques bases on May 1, 2003, and the lands are currently controlled by the US Fish and Wildlife Services.
About the Parent Advisory Art Project
Marco Caridad founded this ephemeral activation to take unconventional and unexpected venues for itinerant pop-up exhibitions that challenge taboos and social norms through erotic Art.
About The Artists
Marco Caridad (he/him/his) was born in Venezuela and lives and works in Miami. He discovered Vieques in 2012, and since then, he has come yearly for periods. Caridad has exhibited in places such as the Centro de Bellas Artes de Maracaibo, Doral Contemporary Art Museum, Wolfsonian-FIU Museum, Historic Miami Post Office Museum, Miramar Cultural Center, Koubek Center, and Centro Cultural Español. Caridad is an interdisciplinary artist who challenges artistic mediums’ temporal and physical expectations through their direct interaction. By pairing techniques like performance with fabric, video with screen printing, and painting with photography, he builds a new dialogue across eras of time.
Sheila Fraga (she/her/hers) was born in Cuba and lives and works in Miami. She is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts of San Alejandro, Marianao, Cuba. Fraga received the Salón Flora Grand Prize (2001). Sheila has exhibited at The University of Aveiro, Bairrada Wine Museum, The Bridge Art Center, The Cultural Center of Pompano Beach, The Miramar Art Center, The Foundation Dionísio Pinheiro e Alice Cardoso Pinheiro, Kendall Art Center/Rodriguez Collection, Sidney & Centro de Art Berne Davis, MOAS Daytona Edward E. among others. On her work, she establishes an analogy of liberation in her erotic pieces, where she domesticates pipes (representation of masculinity) to challenge female sexuality through enigmatic compositions.
Carlos Gil Rivera (he/him/his) is a Puerto Rican artist educated in sculpture that works in Vieques; he has always shown a creative intelligence that stands out for his ingenuity and way of marking a unique path in doing and undoing formulas and myths. La Isla Nena, with his charms, has bewitched him, and today he is enthralled. It surprises everyone that those ancient siren songs in his eternal reverberation of him have led him to the path of painting. From the mural, he has gone on to this series of paintings that reveal a sculptor-painter who, in his handling of color, proves to be a poet.
Sandra Reyes (she/her/hers) is a self-taught Puerto Rican artist that works at Vieques. Her early memories are peppered with stories of painting on every possible surface. As a child, Cardboard was her favorite medium, and she would run out of the house after a rainfall to play with mud, using earth colors to paint. Her work arrays of paintings, ceramics, jewelry, and mosaics. Her approach is made as self-therapy, as an escape. For Reyes, magic is a constant where Vieques have a sense of place and history, aiming the public to see her work and reminisce about their lives and their past or of the places where they had been born and lived. Sandra’s most significant influence is muralist Diego Rivera, who made her appreciate the power of public art and how it can transform a community.