THE ABORIGINAL LEGACY OF PUERTO RICO REVELED IN THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF NEW YORK

In July 13, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York opened an exhibition that explores current art practices that celebrate indigenous art in America. The show 'Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art' brings together the work of seven Latino artists based in the United States and Puerto Rico whose work is placed within the framework of the exhibition in order to explore the legacies of the different indigenous peoples of the continent. The Puerto Rican aboriginal legacy is reveled in the installation of Jorge González, a local artist who has integrated into his work samples of a variety of techniques that have been transmitted from generation to generation, such as the weaving of the enea or cattail plant fiber, which he has learned from artisan Fernando Torres-Flores from the Certenejas region in Cidra, and the pre-Columbian pottery techniques done by the family of Alice Chéveres, who runs a pottery workshop named Taller Cabachuelas in the town of Morovis. The Puerto Rican aboriginal legacy can also be seen in the petroglyph monoprints that are exhibited in a small room of the exhibition at the Whitney, the work of the American artist Monica Flaherty Frassetto, who documented several petroglyph sites in Puerto Rico in 1956-57.

The technique used by Frassetto to document the petroglyphs is called surface stamping on fabric, a technique that initially consists of inking the areas that were not carved in the rock, that is, the area around the groove of the petroglyphs, with water-soluble ink applied with brushes and rubber rollers. The artist then placed a piece of cloth on the inked surface, causing the ink to transfer to the fabric, creating a monotype print of the petroglyphs. Because it is a direct tracing of the rock, Frassetto's images reproduce the original drawings at the same scale in which they were carved, and in turn, allows us to understand the spatial arrangements we see in sites with several petroglyphs carved together. The prints made by this artist are kept in the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, in San Juan.