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ABSTRACT
On 20 September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico causing unprecedented disaster. From that day onwards, the Puerto Rican multi-layered colonial, social and political context was further complicated by the traumatic acceleration of a human disaster via this natural disaster. This crystalized the urgency of using art as vehicle for (social) catharsis, a practice that continues to be used by individual artists, collectives, community organizations, art projects, and other art institutions on the island and abroad, through mural art, community paintings, art exhibitions, literature, music, and many other aesthetic expressions. This article examines, from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective, post-Hurricane María artistic expressions in contemporary art as decolonial aesthetics through the cathartic use of the frame of an aesthetics of disaster. It is argued that, an aesthetics of disaster aims to re-assert an artistic form that is able to accelerate the discursive nullification of a deeply rooted colonial, social and cultural problem by way of art as catharsis inspired by the way that Hurricane María unveiled these problems. The piece briefly contextualizes Puerto Rico, and it examines the idea of Puerto Rican contemporary art as catharsis. Then, it describes how Puerto Rican contemporary art exhibitions and associated aesthetic production are processing urgent post-hurricane issues through three illustrative pieces in exhibitions in PR and abroad in the United States (US). Lastly, decolonial aesthetics is reexamined and re-understood, informed by Édouard Glissant's view expressed in Poetics of Relation which aids to the conclusion that Puerto Rican contemporary art using the frame of an aesthetics of disaster functions as a powerful form of decolonial aesthetics.
Acknowledgements
I would like to firstly thank the artists, Gabriella Torres, Patrick Mcgrath Muñiz, Adrían Viajero, and many others for their insights about their works. I would also like to thanks Professor Linda Alcoff, Shannon Lowrie and Dr Josephine Robertson for their valuable insights and help at large in this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Carlos Rivera Santana is a research associate at CENTRO Hunter College, CUNY, currently researching Puerto Rican and Caribbean aesthetic expressions from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective. Before being a research associate, Dr Rivera Santana was based in Australia for over seven years where he completed his PhD and was a lecturer (assistant professor) specializing in cultural and postcolonial studies at The University of Queensland. Before that he completed his MA and BA at the University of Puerto Rico. His forthcoming book entitled Archaeology of colonisation: from aesthetics to biopolitics will be released in the fall of 2019 within the book series Critical perspectives in theory, culture and politics published by Rowman & Littlefield International.
Notes
1 Colonization here is understood as a form of governance that pervades the logics of individuals and societies in a colonizer-colonized binary (Fanon Citation2008, Rivera-Santana & Fryer Citation2014 [many more sources can be cited]).
2 Coloniality is a term that refers to the political, epistemological and ‘ontological’ logics that made colonialism possible, as explained by Maldonado Torres it is: ‘Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and every day (Maldonado-Torres Citation2008, p. 243).
3 An Arawak-Tainú Indigenous name for Puerto Rico.
4 In ‘Monstrous anthropology: the appearance of colonisation’ in Third Text and in other works, monstrous anthropology is the aesthetic form in which colonization starts by assembling its first racial discursive tools in the 15th and 16th centuries in the Caribbean from a classical aesthetics of ugliness. This was the way the colonized first were anthropocentrically conceptualized, through a monstrous western aesthetics, which instituted narrative frames that still lingers on today. See article for a more detailed explanation, focused on the western aesthetic assemblage of indigeneity.
5 One would have to remember that the first slavery in the Americas was Indigenous and that African decent was not interchangeable to slavery until the 17th century (Sued-Badillo Citation2003, Alegría Ricardo Citation2004).
6 For an elaborate account of Puerto Rican visual art and the U.S., see CENTRO Journal Special Issue entitled ‘Puerto Rican visual artists and the United States’ (2005) edited by Yasmin Ramírez.
7 The Puerto Rico, Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) is a 2016 restructuring law legislated by the US Congress in 2016 that created a Financial Oversight and Management Board to overlook any legislation that has budget implications created by the Puerto Rican government. The board is constituted by Federal government appointees and therefore non-elected by Puerto Ricans. For a scholarly cultural studies analysis of PROMESA see an article by Pedro Cabán entitled ‘PROMESA, Puerto Rico and the American Empire in Latino Studies (Caban Citation2018).
8 Many studies estimated Hurricane María's death toll given that the Puerto Rican government was not able to provide reliable figures. One study commissioned by Harvard University estimated the total death toll to over 4500 (Kishore, et al. Citation2018).
9 For instance, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, CUNY published a comprehensive post Hurricane María report in 2017 available in this link: https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/events-news/rebuild-puerto-rico/puerto-rico-post-maria-report.
10 For instance, after the event almost no one could find out if their family members were safe, virtually for weeks, given that most communication antennas were destroyed.
11 The main parties in Puerto Rico are mainly defined by their vision of the relationship with the United States. The Partido Popular Democrático [Popular Democratic Party] is defined by continuing with the current political status or the status quo. The Partido Nuevo Progresista [Progressive New Party] is defined by its pro-statehood vision. The Partido Indendentista Puertorriqueño [Pro-Independence Puerto Rican Party] is defined by wanting to achieve the complete self-determination of Puerto Rico by forming an independent nation-state.
12 For instance, Taína B. Caragol-Barreto's article ‘Aesthetics of Exile: The construction of Nuyorican identity in the art of El Taller Boricua in Centro Journal suggest post-structural and post-modern ideas of de-territorialized identities expressed in New York through visual art well before the advent of post-structuralism and post-modernism.
13 Jenifer Presto uses the notion of aesthetics of disaster, specifically an ‘aesthetics of catastrophe’ to re-examine Blok and Messina, however she still frames this aesthetics from one of beauty, Presto states: ‘This aesthetics of catastrophe is invested in the decadent notion of the beauty of cultural decline and is most clearly articulated in Blok's writings on Italian art and culture … ’ (Presto Citation2011, 581). The conflation of the Kantian notions of beauty and the sublime is a critique that might derail the content of this article, and one that could not be fairly discussed here as well.
14 For instance, an analysis of post-hurricane popular music's expression can be found in Popular Music and Society written by Dr. Teófilo Espada-Brignoni entitled ‘From the roars of hurricanes to the chords of standards: how we used popular music in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico’ and published online in 24 May 2018 (Espada-Brigoni Citation2018).
15 The list includes almost 100 permutations of phrases using the acronym of ‘PM’.
16 You wanted this destruction/You were waiting for it//Before the fallen island, you laugh and cry/You are happy that everything crumbles/Before your hands, wounded//You are happy/to have your hands dirty/You smile and cry because you survived,/you too,/alongside other women,/and alongside your children, and your clan,/to enjoy impunity/ to taste your power. [Author's translation.]
17 Mayra Santos Febres is an author, poet, novelist, professor of literature, essayist and literary critic from Puerto Rico. This poem is from a 2018 poetry book entitled Huracanada, an aesthetic response from the realm of poetry the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.