#InTheLoop | World Renown Puerto Rican, Finnish Artists Display Talent at MoMA PS1
BY QEDC It's In Queens
Daniel Lind-Ramos turns found and gifted objects—i.e. beach debris—into sculptures and videos. The Puerto Rican artist’s pieces evoke Hurricane Maria, the COVID-19 pandemic, general environmental degradation, and Puerto Rican identity after more than 500 years of colonialism, cultural erasure, and environmental destruction.
His largest-ever museum show, El Viejo Griot — Una historia de todos nosotros, opens at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City on Thursday, April 20. The exposition features 10 monumental sculptures — including four works created specifically for the exhibit– and two video pieces that weave together his multi-layered practice. It’s on view until Sept. 4.
Centinelas de la luna negra references the harvest of mangroves in the beach community of Piñones. Two pieces that Lind-Ramos created during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ambulancia and Alegoría de una obsesión, incorporate objects like emergency lights and cleaning tools to explore collective experiences of trauma and loss. El Viejo Griot draws inspiration from a character in Loíza’s annual Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol to invoke critical events in Puerto Rico’s history. Then there’s Las Tres Marías, a series of three works that draw on the contradictions between Maria as a revered saint and the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Combining materials he collected with items given to him by friends and neighbors, the pieces evoke wind and lightning while also referencing how communities came together in the super storm’s aftermath.
Lind-Ramos, a 2021 McArthur Genius (below), was born in Loíza on the Caribbean island’s northeast coast. Settled about 400 years ago by Yorubas who had been taken from what is now Nigeria as slaves, the town has a rich African heritage that is still evident in its music, dance, cuisine, art, and colorful vejigante masks. He has shown around the world and has works in the permanent collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, and Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico.
What About Scandinavia?
MoMA PS1 will also display Iiu Susiraja’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, A style called a dead fish from April 20 to Sept. 4.
Susiraja, who lives and works in Finland, mixes unabashed, personal photographs and videos in her practice. Similar to Lind-Ramos, she uses household objects—everything from tablecloths to rubber duckies to dead fish—with bodily manipulations and she jumps from uneasiness to comfortable and vice versa.
Also like Lind-Ramos, Susiraja, who has an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, has held solo exhibitions around the world. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including the University of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma/Finnish National Gallery, Rubell Family Collection, Gothenburg Museum of Art, and The Finnish Museum of Photography.
MoMA PS1
Located in a former public school building at 22-25 Jackson Ave., MoMA PS1 features an outdoor gallery, a two-story display room with high ceilings, and many creatively utilized nooks and crannies. (Yes, it’s affiliated with Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, and the two venues often collaborate.)
General admission is $10, but seniors and students can attend for $5, and New York residents don’t have to pay anything at all. The museum is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Open hours are noon to 6 pm on Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and Friday and noon to 8 pm on Saturday.
Top and bottom images: MoMA PS1; middle image: Daniel Lind-Ramos