On Corruption & Healing: Sun-Drenched Disasters

ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS Gretchen Ruiz-Ramos • Lilliam Nieves Pedro Vélez • Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D.

Puerto Rico

: an exotic, tropical paradise for tourists, a tax-free haven for investors, and a place that has endured centuries of colonialism and oppression. First, a colony under Spaniard rule since 1493, then, after the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898 Puerto Rico is handed to the United States as a spoil of war. We have been subjected to the most powerful empire in the global North while being led by a corrupt and neoliberal government.

Regarding the most recent tragedies…on September 20, 2017, María, a category 5 hurricane hit the island.

While the natural event caused evident damage, its aftermath was of greater impact. The inefficient, negligent, and even criminal handling of the emergency by both the local and federal government, resulted in the deaths of 4,465 people. The power outage lasted months for some of the rural towns, thus turning into Puerto Rico’s largest blackout. Almost four years later we can still see roofless homes covered with the now famous blue tarps.

The colonial administrators, led by governor Ricardo “Ricky” Rosselló took advantage of the situation to impulse laws that the majority would normally reject, such as the disastrous Labor Reform and the closing of more than 200 public schools. Puerto Rican feminist scholar and philosophy professor, Rocío Zambrana explains:

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The state decides between life and death by dismantling education and health care; raising utility costs and eliminating pensions; sustaining environmental racism and remapping land use amenable to logics of expropriation; intensifying tax exemption for the rich, creditors, and corporations, while implementing regressive taxation, and so on. 1

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Nonetheless, the recovery after Hurricane María was a collective, community-based effort. Solidarity networks -especially in rural areas- where responsible for trimming, collecting debris, and even creating communal kitchens. Puerto Ricans helped each other, when (once again) the government turned its back on them.

On July 2019 we were hit by the viral spread of a chat between Rosselló and other government officials making racist and misogynistic comments, and mocking the dead. The people had had enough, this was the last straw, and it ignited an uprising that lasted two weeks and would later become known as “The _____________________

Rocío Zambrana, “Black Feminist Tactics: On La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción’s Politics without Guarantees,” Society + Space (February 2020): https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/blackfeminist-tactics-on-la-colectiva-feminista-en-construccions-politics-without-guarantees.

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ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D.

Summer of ‘19”. Puerto Ricans from diverse identities and backgrounds protested and demanded the governor’s resignation, but also accountability and transparency in all governmental fields. The pressure was such that on July 24, 2019, Rosselló finally resigned. Regarding the Summer of ’19’s demonstrations, professor and researcher José Atiles points out a shift in the consciousness and the practice of the people:

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…the popular claim for Rosselló’s resignation suspended legality and created a space in which the terms of the debate were not based on the constitutionality of the event, but on the popular claim for alternate ways of doing politics. Even when the Puerto Rican Police engaged in excessive uses of violence and rioting, under the justification that after 11PM the demonstrations were no longer protected by the PR Constitution, protestors did not articulate their claims in terms of legality, but rather, in political terms. Therefore, what we saw during the Puerto Rican Summer was the abandonment of colonial legal rationality, and an emancipatory praxis that can be defined as the configuration of a new political ethos. 2

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Artists Gretchen Ruiz-Ramos, Lilliam Nieves, and Pedro Vélez developed a body of work shaped in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. While we were granted a two-week residency at the Saari Artist Residency in Finland, funded by the KONE Foundation, the lockdowns and strict traveling guidelines made our visit impossible. These limitations have also had their impact in our production. The work was created then in Puerto Rico where we spent a week in Adjuntas, a mountainside town with breathtaking views, then another week in Rincón, on the west side of the island at a beach front place. Gretchen RuizRamos worked on underwater photography in Culebra, a small paradisiac island of the archipelago.

Being able to produce our work in these calm and surrounded by nature places was definitely a peaceful break to the chaos and general discontent with which we live on a daily basis. Still, it was different, from the original plan: being able to create new works of art and research while physically being in one of the least corrupt countries in the world, Finland. 3 As previously stated, Ruiz-Ramos, photographer and also founder and president of nonprofit arts organization Pitirre Proyectos has been working with a set of underwater photographs. Instead of going for a literal representation of the Caribbean, the artist uses abstraction to show the dazzling colors of our shores. _____________________

José Atiles, “One of the Most Corrupt Places on Earth: Colonialism, (Anti)Corruption and the Puerto Rican Summer of 2019,” Society + Space (February 2020): https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/ one-of-the-most-corrupt-places-on-earth-colonialism-anti-corruption-and-the-puerto-rican-summer-of-2019.

Some of the works produced in the Saari Residency were scheduled to be presented at Myyamala2 in Helsinki, but those plans changed as well. Finland prohibits the entrance of shipments of artwork, which is why the exhibition you are seeing is a variation of our original curatorial project, that does not include the paintings and drawings I refer to in this essay, but do include photography by Gretchen Ruíz-Ramos, video art by Lilliam Nieves, and photography and collage by Pedro Vélez.

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ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D.

ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Gretchen Ruiz-Ramos Dónde había vida 48” x 26” printed on backlit fabric, 2021 Dianne BrásPhotography Feliciano, Ph.D.

These blue and green looking waters host a great biodiversity. Something that is also in danger by the lack of governmental protections and the need for educating for the preservation of the environment. Another side effect of laws like Act 20 and 22 of 2012 can be seen in the form of privatization of beaches and natural reserves.

Foreign investors and hedge fund holders are slowly buying off the island, displacing the local communities, and destroying wildlife just for profit. Referring to the governmental narrative underlying act 20 (2012) and the tax evasion haven for foreign millionaires, Naomi Klein states:

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You do not need to reject your American citizenship, not even technically leave the United States to be able to escape its’ laws, regulations and the cold Wall Street winters. You just have to change the address of your company to Puerto Rico, and you will enjoy an amazingly low corporate rate of 4%, a fraction of what corporations pay even after the tax cut recently approved by Donald Trump. Any dividend that a Puerto Rico-based company pays to its’ residents will also be tax-free… 4

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The impact these neoliberal measures have had can also be seen, for example, in the gentrification _____________________

Naomi Klein, La Batalla Por el Paraíso: Puerto Rico y el Capitalismo Del Desastre, (Haymarket Books, 2018), 17, ProQuest Ebook Central. (Translation is my own).

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Gretchen Ruiz-Ramos Social Distancing 48” x 26” Photography printed on backlit fabric, 2021

and displacement of local working-class people.

In a country where most people live under the poverty line, and also where most of the heads of households are women, it is no surprise it is us who suffer the uttermost burden of colonial violence.

A study 5 led by local organizations Kilómetro Cero and Matria exposed that weekly there is a woman murdered in our island. The alarming rate of femicides along with the persistent struggle and urgent demanding by activists and grassroots organizations, led governor Pedro Pierluisi on January 2021 to finally proclaim Puerto Rico in a state of emergency over gender violence. 6 It is in this context of great violence against women and trans people that artist Lilliam Nieves has been working on the “Beauty Queen” series. As its title (ironically) references the sexist practice of beauty pageants. Through these works, she condemns the patriarchal imposition of dominant standards of beauty. These conservative and racist standards reject bodies that are not thin and white, for example.

The artist is empowered and confident in her own skin throughout her self-portraits. While some of them may seem playful, they highlight sexist microaggressions, that are indeed violent and make way for verbal and even physical abuse.

Going back to the events that became the Puerto Rican Summer of ’19, it is imperative to point out the theoretical and practical efforts of Puerto Rico’s most radical feminist organization: Colectiva Feminista en Construcción (“La Cole”). Even though some try to explain the Summer of ‘19’s protests as spontaneous and “leaderless”, the truth is that counterhegemonic groups (like La Cole) had been educating and organizing dissent through conferences, camps and rallies. Therefore, while it is true to say that a mass of unorganized people went then to their first demonstration ever, it is also important emphasize the work done and the path led by grassroots organizations so that these kinds of events could unfold.

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La Colectiva’s actions make explicit the links between debt and gender violence; between a housing crisis, the operation of finance, and logics of expulsion that impact women disproportionally; between disaster capitalism and debt/austerity in the wake of María; between consumerism and poverty. Rather than emphasizing the creativity of the protests or the organizational capability gained through autogestión, then, I stress that the protests were a confrontation with the state/capital that held the state accountable. 7

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https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5af199815cfd796ad4930e20/t/5dc9e073b235e775026ce324/1573511288492/Executive+Summary+English.pdf.

Al Jazeera News, “Puerto Rico declares state of emergency over gender violence,” Al Jazeera, January 26, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/puerto-rico-declares-state-of-emergency-overgender-violence. | 7 Zambrana.

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ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D.

In “Beauty Queen X”, the artist holds a camera in front of her genitals, and portray herself against what looks like a pixeled background under an image editing toolbar. With this painting, Nieves comments on several topics: the obsession to edit feminized bodies to fit unattainable beauty conventions, and it also addresses the centuries in art history were women were only depicted as objects. Here is Nieves claims power over her body while also creating, making art.

Lilliam Nieves “Confinement” video performance (still) 2020 Lilliam Nieves Beauty Queen X 80” x 34 ⅜” Acrylic on canvas, 2020-2021

Pedro Vélez Natalie Jaresko and the Banks of America 14” x 17” Sculpted acrylic paint (jawbone and teeth) on aluminum print, 2021

Pedro Vélez’ work has been characterized by a critique of economic and political issues and their impact in the artworld as well. In the series we are presenting he collaborates with friends who provide photographs and ideas useful for the final concept. Thus, making themselves an active part of the creation. This body of work combines intimate moments during the lockdown, even the isolation felt during the first months, never losing perspective of our socioeconomic context. On “Nature is Healing”, one can see a person in their underwear having a drink at home, and a plant struggling to survive, and sprout again in the background. The notion and feeling that indeed nature IS healing is shared by all of us in this project, and it became even more evident while working on our residence. The therapeutic, calming effect of nature as well as our evident political dissent, fuel our production.

ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D.

Pedro Vélez Nature is Healing 77 ½” x 62” Acrylic on curtain material mesh, 2021

Ernesto Busigó (pianist), Christian García-Roque (tenor), Rafael Lebrón-Vega (sound recording), Patricia Vásquez (mezzosoprano), and Yaritza Zayas (soprano) of Ópera Coquí collaborated with this project by developing a soundtrack for the exhibition. The recording is a mix of Puerto Rican music that goes from the traditional Puerto Rican danza to original and avant-garde tracks. Zayas’ sound piece titled “Variaciones Sobre un Encierro Colectivo No Planificado” shows the emotional impact the Covid-19 lockdown had on people.

Finally, even through these sun-drenched disasters, art remains for us a way to claim our space, condemn injustice, and voice our resistance.

Dianne Brás-Feliciano, Ph.D. Curator Ópera Coquí at the studio recording, 2021

ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D.

References Al Jazeera News. “Puerto Rico declares state of emergency over gender violence.” Al Jazeera, January 26, 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/puerto-rico-declares-state-ofemergency-over-gender-violence.

Atiles, José. “One of the Most Corrupt Places on Earth: Colonialism, (Anti)Corruption and the Puerto Rican Summer of 2019.” Society + Space (February 2020): https://www.societyandspace.org/ articles/one-of-the-most-corrupt-places-on-earth-colonialism-anti-corruption-and-the-puertorican-summer-of-2019.

Harvey, David. “Neoliberalism Is A Political Project”. Jacobin (July 2016): https://www.jacobinmag. com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/. Accessed June 16th, 2021.

Kilómetro Cero and Matria. The Persistence of Indolence: Femicides in Puerto Rico, 2014-2018. San Juan: 2019. Accessed June 5th, 2021.

Klein, Naomi. La Batalla Por el Paraíso: Puerto Rico y el Capitalismo Del Desastre, Haymarket Books, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uprrp-ebooks/ detail.action?docID=5376002.

Accessed May 29th, 2021.

Zambrana, Rocío. “Black Feminist Tactics: On La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción’s Politics without Guarantees”. Society + Space (February 2020): https://www.societyandspace.org/ articles/black-feminist-tactics-on-la-colectiva-feminista-en-construccions-politics-withoutguarantees. Accessed June 6th, 2021.

ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D.

ON CORRUPTION & HEALING: SUN-DRENCHED DISASTERS

Puerto Rican Saari Fellows 2021: Artists: Gretchen Ruiz-Ramos @pitirreproyectos Lilliam Nieves @lilliamnieves_artist and Pedro Vélez @pdrvelez Curator: Dianne Brás Feliciano, Ph.D. www.dbfartconsultant.com

Co-Curator: Timo Tuhkanen Myymälä2 (Helsinki) Director Graphic Designer: Félix G. Romero

Gretchen Ruiz-Ramos COVID-19 Trash 2021

Cover photo: Kathy’s Memories, 2017: Gretchen Ruiz-Ramos