In her Art of the Story and WBGO Journal segment, Emily Springer spoke with Angel Antonio Ruiz Laboy, associate Director of Arts and Culture at CENTRO, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, about Ida Y Vuelta, an exhibition focusing on migration through contemporary Puerto Rican Art.
Since 1973, CENTRO, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, has been an invaluable resource for information about the Puerto Rican diaspora. Using their work to support students, scholars, artists, and the Puerto Rican community at large has always been an essential part of their mission. Now, as they celebrate their 50th anniversary and reflect on their achievements, arts and culture have proven to be an important pillar of the work done at the center.
Angel Antonio Ruiz Laboy serves as the Associate Director of Arts and Culture and shares just how foundational culture and artistic practices are to the organization. He says, "It's really difficult to tell the contributions of the Puerto Rican diaspora without including the artistic and the cultural contributions of Puerto Ricans in general. We’ve been all over the place, doing contributions in music and literature. Artists, sometimes, are already processing what we are going through before it gets into the data, before it is processed into numbers.”
Ida y Vuelta: Experiencias de la migración en el arte puertorriqueño contemporáneo which translates to Arrivals and Departures: Migration Experiences in Contemporary Puerto Rican Art, is the perfect example of art and its connection to a lived experience globally. Curated by Dr. Laura Bravo and Featuring 19 different artists, the exhibition, which was Original on display in 2017 at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus, shares the complex reality of migration. Angel shares, “Something that I really like about the exhibition is also that it is not limited to the migration to the US. It also includes migration to other places like Germany and Spain, and other places. Some of these artists are everywhere. It's not just New York; it's not just the US. And something that has been very special is that the audience have been able, even if they're Puerto Rican, or not, they have been able to connect with this exhibition because migration is a contemporary issue not just for Puerto Ricans, it's a contemporary issue for everyone. This is one of the assets of this exhibition, and we're so happy to be talking about these issues that affect every one of us."
Ida y Vuelta is on display through September 30th at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery. 119th street and 3rd Avenue. More information about the exhibition, including gallery hours, featured artists, and other engagements from Centro, can be found at centro.hunter.cuny.edu.