MÁXIMO RAFAEL COLÓN: STORIED LENS POLITICAL PORTRAITS OF NUYORICAN CULTURE FOCAL EXHIBITION OF XIXth BORIMIX FESTIVAL
MÁXIMO RAFAEL COLÓN: STORIED LENS
POLITICAL PORTRAITS OF NUYORICAN CULTURE
FOCAL EXHIBITION OF XIXth BORIMIX FESTIVAL
On View November 14, 2024 to January 15, 2025
Sharing The Spotlight Artist Talks Featuring Emerging Latinx Photographers To Run Through January 2025
Máximo Rafael Colón, Fiesta de Loiza, 1975.
New York, NY – November 13, 2024 – The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center and Teatro LATEA are pleased to co-present Storied Lens, a selection of photographs created over 50 years by Puerto Rican artist Máximo Rafael Colón. The exhibition, part of the XIXth BORIMIX festival celebrating the agency and trailblazing role of Puerto Ricans in New York, is for the first time dedicated to the work of a single artist. Sharing the Spotlight, a series of conversations highlighting additional Latinx artists will be presented alongside the exhibition beginning on November 16, 2024, featuring emerging artists Destiny Mata, Amy Ponce, Mario Rubén Carrión, Maylyn “Zero” Iglesias, and Jon Ferrer.
Co-curated by artist-academics Mercedes Trelles and Miguel Trelles, Storied Lens demonstrates Colón’s commitment to politics, portraiture, and the “cultural provocateurs”: the people who ignited and kept the flame of Puerto Rican culture alive in New York through institutions like Taller Boricua, the Nuyorican Poet’s Café and New York’s rich music and festival scene. The selection, from Máximo’s personal archive, also constitutes a love letter to analog photography and the information-rich, uncropped print that relies on the precise moment.
“People are constantly going on about the flag. And that’s a starting point, a way of being proud. But I wish they would identify with the history,” shared Colón.
Colón moved to New York from Arecibo in Puerto Rico (“la Villa del Capitán Correa”) at a young age. His photography has always been marked by a profound concern with social justice, documenting sit-ins, the emergence of the Young Lords, and Latino equal rights protests during the Civil Rights Movement. His images capture a period of upheaval and political ferment reflecting an unwavering commitment to Puerto Rican Nationalism and the struggle for the liberation of imprisoned Nationalists such as Carlos Feliciano, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda and Irvin Flores Rodríguez.
Storied Lens is supported by The Clemente and LxNY as part of the initiative Historias, continuing its celebration and recontextualization of the Latinx cultural community’s foundational contributions to New York City. The three-year-long citywide presentation of cultural programming, art commissions, and scholarship is the largest initiative in The Clemente’s thirty-year history.
Storied Lens will be on view from November 14, 2024, to January 15, 2025 in The Tamayo Gallery in Teatro LATEA. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, November 14 from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm. Throughout the exhibition, Colón invited emerging Latinx photographers to discuss their work in the series of artist talks Sharing the Spotlight, held inside Teatro LATEA. All Sharing the Spotlight artist talks will be free and open to the public. A schedule of events is below. For more information, visit The Clemente’s website.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
Saturday, Nov. 16 @ 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Mercedes Trelles in conversation with Maximo Rafael Colón.
An in-depth interactive conversation between Storied Lens co-curator Mercedes Trelles (University of Puerto Rico) and Maximo Rafael Colón. They will discuss Colón’s photo practice, his trajectory, the selection of photographs in Storied Lens and upcoming projects.
Saturday, Nov. 23 @ 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Artist talk: Destiny Mata
Destiny Mata is a Mexican American photographer and filmmaker based in her native New York City focusing on issues of subculture and community. She is currently preparing a series of documentary works continuing her exploration of the fabric of local communities, and will discuss her upcoming collaborative multimedia project Lower East Side Yearbook led by residents of Lower East Side public housing.
Saturday, Dec. 7 @ 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Artist talk: Amy Ponce and Mario Rubén Carrión
Amy Ponce was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, by Boricua parents. Her work includes self-portraiture, mixed media, collage, video, and music. As an Arts Educator and community activist, she has always encouraged the art of storytelling via our “own lens”. Amy is also a member of the Nuyorican band Abrazos Army and has lent her voice to several social justice causes and cultural groups in NYC.
Mario Rubén Carrión is an artist and cultural worker from Caguas, Puerto Rico now based in Brooklyn, NY. As a photographer and filmmaker, he has documented the Latine community of New York City for over a decade, navigating the worlds of music, nightlife and organizing. Mario edited the award-winning documentary “We Still Here/Nos Tenemos” in 2021 and has since written and directed his first fiction short film, “Record Shop”, which recently wrapped its film festival run. He is currently the New Media Manager at the Caribbean Cultural Center & African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) in Harlem, NY.
Saturday, Dec. 14 @ 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Artist talk: Maylyn “Zero” Iglesias
Maylyn “Zero” Iglesias is a Nuyorican photographer, educator, archivist, and curator born and raised on the Lower East Side. She is inspired by 1980’s graffiti, hip hop, punk, and her mother’s Salsa and Supremes records. Iglesias’ work is focused on her beloved Loisaida with the aim of documenting remnants of the quickly disappearing Nuyorican culture. Her personal project, “What’s It Mean to be Nuyorican” was added to the LaGuardia Wagner Archives in 2021. During that time she joined the Loisaida Center to head their newly-launched archive program, which was created to preserve the history of LES photographers, poets, musicians, and neighborhood leaders and activists.
Saturday, Jan. 4 @ 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Artist talk: Jon Ferrer
Jon Ferrer is a freelance photographer from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, N.Y. Jon practices photography of all genres but his first love is for imagery of the streets of New York. During this talk, Ferrer will share his perspective on the connection between art and mental health, formed through trauma experienced as a poor Hispanic child from a single-parent home who grew to be a combat war veteran.
###
About Máximo Rafael Colón
Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Máximo Rafael Colón is a New York-based photographer who studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Colón’s photography speaks to his concerns about social justice, activism, and cultural expression which encapsulates a wide range of interest in music, the human condition, and making visible the people of our society who are often marginalized through discrimination and inequality. His primary medium is analogue photography, Colón also creates assemblages in the found object tradition. His works have been exhibited in several venues throughout New York City and Puerto Rico and a number of his photographs form part of the Centro De Estudios Puertorriqueños archives at CUNY Hunter College and of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
In 2015, Colón’s photography was prominently featured in ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and The Loisaida Center in Manhattan. A number of his photographs form part of the Centro De Estudios Puertorriqueños archives at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and his work has also been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, Bronx Documentary Center, New York Cultural Center and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. He is currently editing My Upside Down World: Deconstructing Photography, a five-year digital project encompassing photographs from New York, Puerto Rico, Berlin, Mainz, Paris, Havana, and Toronto His works can be found in numerous publications and film documentaries and are part of many private collections.
About The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center
Founded in 1993, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center is a Puerto Rican/Latinx multi-arts institution with an inclusive and international vision rooted in NYC’s Lower East Side/Loisaida. The Clemente engages diverse audiences in heritage preservation, neighborhood history, and cutting-edge multicultural experimentation, emphasizing the humanities’ role in bridging civic and cultural life.
As a downtown cultural mainstay for three decades, we focus on cultivating, presenting, and preserving Puerto Rican and Latinx culture while embracing a multi-ethnic and international perspective. Committed to operating in a polyphonic manner, The Clemente provides affordable spaces to artists, small arts organizations, and independent community producers, reflecting the rich cultural diversity of the Lower East Side and New York City. Guided by our namesake’s values of culturally grounded multigenerational leadership, local empowerment, and mutuality, we are a collaborative hub for creating and co-producing multidisciplinary contemporary work.
The Clemente is a proud co-founder/partner of LxNY Consortium and the Coalition of Small Arts NYC (CoSA NYC).
About LxNY
LxNY | Latinx Arts Consortium of New York is a collaborative peer network dedicated to knowledge exchange, resource-sharing, and collective action towards systemic change. Formed in 2020 by organizations serving Latinx communities and artists across New York City, LxNY aims to transform the historical underfunding of Latinx arts by advocating for the equity-driven missions of our cultural institutions, nurturing our deep relationships with community, and stewarding our hard-fought legacies into the future. Advancing cultural work as essential work, LxNY honors the expertise of our multigenerational arts leaders and culture bearers, harnessing their collective experience to better serve the city’s diverse cultural landscape.
The LxNY Historias Working Group comprises six organizations within the Consortium that will play key roles as programmatic partners and advisors for the initiative. This group is represented by the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (Pregones/PRTT), People’s Theater Project (PTP), Bronx Music Heritage Center (BMHC), Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), and New Latin Wave.
###
For images, further background, or interviews, please contact:
Katrina Stewart
Senior Account Coordinator, Visual Arts
Blue Medium
T: +1-212-675-1800
Fernando Salazar
Communications Manager
LxNY