Artists
Puerto Rico
Marta Mabel Peréz
Dream and Long
13.08.08 26.09.08
Marta Mabel is an artist and museologist who uses photography as one of her main means of expression. Since 2005 she is Manager of the Artist Assistance Program (PROA), Art Museum of Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico. Researcher for excellence, she travelled to Argentina for the first time to carry out an exploration residency. Her research focused on getting to know the culture of the city, exploring the citizen territory with her camera to record and capture its spirit through the photographic image.
With images from her photographic archive brought from Puerto Rico, she is working on the design of the future installation Sueña y Anhela that will be exhibited in the Polyglot Hall at the end of her residency.
BIO
Marta Mabel Pérez
1968 | Lares, Puerto Rico.
Lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
STUDIES
1997 | MFA, Academy of San Carlo, National Autonomous University of Mexico. Mexico DF, Mexico.
1991 | BFA, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Seminars on Modern American Art and Architecture American University, Washington DC. USA.
EXHIBITIONS
2006 | Between Islands: Island Issues, Casa Aboy. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2006 | Road Project. Canary Islands, Spain.
2002 | Enfrascados, Raices Gallery. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1999 | Urban Garden, X Cerveira Biennial. Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal.
1999 | Infrastructure / PR under construction, Untitled Gallery. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1998 | Insularismo, Untitled Gallery. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1997 | Lo Cotidiano, Untitled Gallery. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
AWARDS
2006-2007 | Scholarship. Basic Grant Program for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2005-2006 | Scholarship. Basic Grant Program for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2002-2003 | Scholarship. Basic Grant Program for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2001 | Best Contemporary Media Installation. International Association of Art Critics, Chapter of Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2000-2001 | Scholarship. Basic Grant Program for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1998-1999 | Scholarship. Puerto Rican Fund for the Financing of Cultural Activities, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
COLLECTIONS
Academia de San Carlo, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico.
San Ángel Cultural Center, Mexico.
Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito de Arecibo. Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Ponce Art Museum. Ponce, Puerto Rico.
Museum of Art of Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Museum of History, Anthropology and Art, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. San Juan Puerto Rico.
Related Activities
Exhibitions
Dream and Long
Marta Mabel Peréz
13.08.08 26.09.08
Pérez stands out in photography. Her work deals with both the migratory processes of Puerto Ricans and the situations that affect the Puerto Rican society. She currently lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico where she works as Manager of the Assistance Program (PROA) at the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico.
DREAM AND LONG (por Alicia Candini)
Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony since its discovery in 1493. For centuries, the British Empire fought for possession of the island until in 1898, as a consequence of the Spanish-American War, the territory was given to the United States of America. Five decades later, in 1952, the island obtained the status of Free Associated States, a territory not incorporated into the United States but governed by its own Constitution.
Many believe that after more than 400 years of history under the colonial system, the Puerto Ricans have made a historic feat in their attempt to adapt to this contradictory reality, assuming the duality or cultural fragmentation to which they were and are exposed. While discovering the complexity of these migratory processes, the dichotomy of speaking Spanish in an English-speaking country and of feeling Latin American while carrying a US passport; the artist constructs a fragmented and multiple identity that replaces the uselessness of trying to define it in a linear way. Thus, the exhibition Sueña y Anhela is made up of the photographic work of Marta Mabel Pérez Entre Islas: ISLOS ISSUES and a select series of videos: The reception (2006), The arrival (2006), The tour (2006), Exam for American Citizenship (2007) and Fully Bilingual (2005-2008). The works present the Canarian, Dominican and Puerto Rican migratory movements where emigrants yearn for the past and dream of the new life that the American dream promises. In the documentation of her father’s trip to return to the Canary Islands, the artist tells us their story – the story of immigrants relocated to new territories – but, while doing so, she inevitably refers to us – herself and the members of her generation appropriating and re-signifying a culture with one foot on each coast of the Caribbean Sea─ finally articulating the you (us) who, as Latin Americans and in a world of permeable borders and global implications, share many of those processes of plurality and polysemy identity.
´aceNITE, Encounters, Exhibitions
We, You, They
XV Open Get Togethers - Festival of Light
13.08.08