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As seen in issue 53 of Closer Magazine, published on 2008-07-20 in the "LocalArt" section.
Caribbean Commentaries
Quisqueya Henriquez spans media and cultures
By: Julie Kay
When Quisqeuya Henriquez first moved to the Dominican Republic to be near her aging father, people asked her "Will you still do art?'
The idea that geography would hamper her struck Henriquez as beyond incredulous. In fact, the 11 years she has been in the Dominican have turned out to be perhaps the most prolific and inspired of her career.
Now a montage of work from her Dominican years, as well the previous 11 spent in Cuba, Miami and Mexico, is on display at the Miami Art Museum, having debuted last year at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The 42-year-old artist's first major United States retrospective, "Quisqueya Henriquez; the World Outside, a Survey Exhibition 1991-2007," consists of 22 sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, videos and light and sound installations.
The exhibit is a homecoming of sorts for Henriquez, who trained in Cuba, at the famed Instituto Superior de Arte, lived in Miami from 1993 to 1997, and has previously been featured in solo shows at Artists Space in New York, the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. Her work has appeared in many international exhibitions as well.
Few artists are as eclectic in their use of media as Henriquez, nearly all of whose works are permeated with both a sense of fun and the feel of the Caribbean. The epitome of this is the samples of Caribbean seawater-infused ice cream handed out to visitors as they enter the museum. I can't say I particularly enjoyed the salty dessert, but I appreciated the spirit of the gesture--the desire to engage all the senses in the aesthetic experience.
"Other artists had previously done dramatic things with the sea," Henriquez explains. "I wanted to use more humor and more daily life."
Jugando con la Adversidad (Playing with Adversity) is one of the most popular pieces in the show, and is another work heavily influenced by her surroundings. In the piece, Henriquez has transformed various sporting balls into useful products: A soccer ball is gutted and turned into a cap. A shell of a basketball becomes a purse. Tennis balls become jewelry. All of this done up in gift wrapping that combines the bright colors of the Caribbean with scenes of garbage washed up on the beaches of the Dominican Republic.
El Mundo de Afuera (The World Outside) is among the exhibit's most provocative works, a video edited down from three years worth of continuous footage shot from her balcony. In the half-hour piece we see everything from dogs defecating below to para-sailers up high to huge ships sailing in the ocean to men at work.
"It was a fun project because we're all voyeurs," Henriquez told the crowd at an opening night presentation. And she's right.
Another video, Intertextualidad, a three-minute loop of a rooster’s interaction with the street, is another reflection of Henriquez’s surroundings—the juxtaposition of the modern with the primitive. The video is amplified, in a hat tip to Andy Warhol, by shading the background wholly in blinking bright colors of red, yellow and orange.
Where other museums keep patrons from touching the art, Henriquez invites us to actually sit on her work, with the assemblage El Centro Puede Estar en Todas Partes (The Center Can Be Everywhere). What is the meaning of the inkjet prints of hairy belly buttons on seven stool cushions? Henriquez isn't saying, but few people were seen actually planting their tushes on the stools at the opening.
"I didn't want to be dramatic," she stated. "I wanted to mock my reality a bit."
Nowhere is that more evident than in the piece, Ropa Congelada de la Serie Burlas (Frozen Cloths From the Series Mockeries), for which Henriquez took her clothes, balled them up, put them in the freezer, then took individual photos of 35 pieces of frozen clothes.
Like the country and region she lives in, Henriquez has a darker, more serious side amidst the color, fun and beauty. That is reflected in several pieces in the exhibit, especially the powerful Metastasis, which she created in 1996 with fellow Cuban-trained artist Consuelo Castaneda. The floor installation has a room of its own at the museum and consists of a series of small lights that turn on in an expanding pattern until the entire room is fully lit.
Henriquez is also a photographer, and displays her fascination with both the everyday and what she sees as Third World horrors. Her photographs ruminate on the use of public spaces, homeless people and seaweed. In one work, which she refers to as Lies, Big Lies, of the Third World, Henriquez displays a Mercedes next to a donkey, a comment on the wide gap between rich and poor in developing countries.
Rene Morales, associate curator of the museum, says Henriquez's exhibit has been well-received.
"A lot of her greatest fans are here in Miami," she says. "And a lot of people who live here are from the Caribbean. People really relate to it. They get it right away. They see she is challenging stereotypes of Latin America."
"Quisqueya Henriquez; the World Outside, a Survey Exhibition 1991-2007," is on display through July 20 at the Miami Art Museum, 101 W. Flagler St., in downtown Miami. For more information, call 305-375-1709 or visit MiamiArtMuseum.org.
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