[music]

Alison Stewart:  This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. A new museum survey that just opened is the largest exhibition dedicated to the work of MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Daniel Lind-Ramos. Lind-Ramos was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He's known for his sculpture work using found objects he gathers from the streets and the beaches and surrounding areas in his community.

Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo Griot — Una historia de todos nosotros is on view now at MoMa PS1, and displays over a dozen works including 10 assembled sculptures and one that's 17 feet wide. There are some new pieces and video installations that touch on various themes of colonialism, environmental devastation, Afro-Puerto Rican identity, Hurricane Maria, and so much more. The New Yorker calls the work in this show "monumental." With me now is the artist, Daniel Lind-Ramos. Hi, Daniel. Nice to meet you.

Daniel Lind-Ramos: My pleasure. My pleasure.

Alison Stewart: As well as curator, Ruba Katrib. Hi, Ruba.

Ruba Katrib: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Daniel, you were born and raised in, let me make sure I say this right, I'm trying my high school Spanish out, Loíza, Puerto Rico.

Daniel Lind-Ramos: That's correct.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] It's on the northeast coast of the island. For people who have never been to community or don't know about it, how would you describe it?

Daniel Lind-Ramos: Well, Loíza is near San Juan. You could get there within 30 minutes. It's Afro-Puerto Rican community. Most of the people that live there come from that past. It's a beautiful place, beautiful beaches, and we have a very strong culture based on that ancestor of that past.

Alison Stewart: I understand the title of the show comes from a festival that happens-- Yes?

Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo is a character of the procession of La Fiesta de Loíza dedicated to Santiago Apóstol. Since I was a child, I had been performing that custom, El Viejo. Now, I make a cameo. El Viejo could be many things, like he could be a storyteller, he could be a musician, he could be an artist, et cetera. For this show, because one of the pieces is called El Viejo Griot, I wanted to add a history of all of us. I would like to put the Viejo in the context of a Griot, someone who tells stories. That's the title.

Alison Stewart: Ruba, how did the principles of what Daniel has just described? How does that connect to your vision for the show? As the curator, how you wanted the show to be a platform for his work?

Ruba Katrib: Well, we were very lucky to see Daniel's work in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. That was one of the first times he had shown his work outside of Puerto Rico in a while. It was very exciting to embark with him on this exhibition to bring together existing works that speak to these issues that he's addressing, but he also made four new works for the show. El Viejo Griot is one of them. As Daniel described, this is a work that he had been thinking about and preparing actually for many years but completed for this exhibition.

The title work of the show, it includes these acts that have really important dates on them that connect to Antillean, Puerto Rican history, and I think it is really indicative of how Daniel works, and that there's so many references within his pieces, so many stories within his works. You could spend literally hours with each sculpture looking at it but also thinking about it. If you're talking with Daniel, there's so many keys into these broader histories, his own history, the history of his community, and as the title also says, the history of us all and the stories of us all.

Alison Stewart: Daniel, when did you start working with found objects?

Daniel Lind-Ramos: In the '80s. End of the '80s, I was thinking about my procedure, and I found that I need something else in order to communicate what I wanted. Let's say that around the '90s, beginning of '90s, I started to incorporate object around the painting because I was then painting and considering conceptualize speaking, painting as another object. Painting was the biggest object in the composition, but it was surrounded by others.

My early experience with objects are related with art towers and shrine that I used to see in houses of my community. Then when I went to the University of Puerto Rico, I was exposed to arte povera. That was at the beginning of the '70s, and arte povera was going strong the last decade. I have assignments, experimentation with objects, found object and poor materials. I start at that time to see the possibilities of expression of objects itself.

During the '90s, as I said, I started to incorporate objects surrounding painting. Then the painting became a litter, and at the end, I didn't include painting as a medium within the other objects, even though elements of the paintings still appears in my work.

Alison Stewart: When you're going out and you see an object, are you going to look for a specific object or do you find an object and you realize, "Oh, this is good material. I can use this somewhere somehow"?

Daniel Lind-Ramos: [chuckles] Objects activate by imagination and objects-- Especially objects that are related with one of my experiences, which was the case of, El Viejo Griot, for example. I saw many times a piece of boats that were abandoned on the shore, but I didn't have the opportunity to bring them to my studio but always those abandoned boats make me think about migration, migration in the region, migration as experience of the planet. Everybody is somehow sometime has migrated.

I started making sketches, and at the same time, other objects, I started to being incorporated. Then finally, and I am speaking specifically about the Viejo Griot, I found another proa of a boat, and then I could bring it to my studio. One thing to say is that sometimes the objects are found, sometimes the objects are given to me, sometimes I have to construct objects in order to create the image related with the narrative, related with the narrative that was inspired by the object itself, but I am free to play with everything. Found it, given, I could construct that even intervene objects.

Alison Stewart: To follow up on what Daniel said, Ruba is, how do you think these found objects in these beautiful sculptures? How do they make a story different than using maybe something traditional?

Ruba Katrib: I think what's so interesting is how Daniel uses objects to stand in for themselves. He uses a lot of objects like FEMA tarps, drums, pots, pans, shards of metal that he found, but everything has a significance, it means something in itself. Then when it comes into the composition, the larger composition he's created, certain objects can take on multiple meetings. They can be really symbolic. They can stand in for things based on their color, based on their shape.

He is actually quite interested in form and composition and color. You have an overall impression of his works when you see them, but then as you dive in, you start to zero in on these individual objects that comprise the whole, and it's just in that way so rich, and there's so much narrative but meaning that comes through the actual objects themselves.

Alison Stewart: Daniel, I've heard you use this word before, and you used it in your last answer, you used the word "play" a lot. When you say, "I'm going to play with this. I'm going to play with these ideas." What does the word "play" mean in your practice? What does that mean to you?

Daniel Lind-Ramos: Play is dealing with the object, believe it or not, in the serious way. Trying to experiment with a different possibility of it, right? An object, you could place it in such a way and it could be meaning something, and then you take it away, and put it beside another one, and the meaning could be different. I like to give opportunity to the object, to give me that information. That, for me, is playing. It's a serious thing. Still, it is something that it very amusing, how the object behaves itself in term of what I want to do. It is like a deal between the object itself and myself. That's, for me, it's playing.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Daniel Lind-Ramos and Ruba Katrib. We are talking about the MoMa PS1 exhibition, Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo Griot — Una historia de todos nosotros, which is on view now, until September 4th. The Three Marias, Daniel. The Three Marias are these three sculptures. Oh my gosh. What do you find in these? You'll find FEMA tarps used in one. There are biblical references. There are references to Hurricane Maria, obviously. I'm going to ask you to say the name of the Three Marias, Daniel.

Daniel Lind-Ramos: You mean the brain with objects?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Ruba Katrib: The titles of them.

Alison Stewart: The titles of them.

Daniel Lind-Ramos: First of all, for me, it was very interesting why they name so powerful and destructive force Maria. Because until then, I've regarded Maria with protection, laws, faith, and everything, and then you have this powerful force that almost they raise off out of the map. I started again playing with the name. Then, I saw the opportunity to say something else with it. In the case of María Guabancex, for example, which is the biggest one, it represents that force, which the original people in this area before Europeans came, used to call it Guabancex. Guabancex, this famous force sent first two emissaries, the strong wind, and the flow with the water.

I remember the first time after the hurricane, that I went out of my house, I had to be in the water, while other people were chopping down trees in order to get off the houses. In my case, the front of the house was flooded. I get into it, and I found a prop in there, and I grabbed it, and I said, "All right. I don't know what I'm going to do with this object, which has a reference of the sky, the water, but I know I'm going to do something." I started with that object. Then, the FEMA tarp, which is relay with help, but it also for me, has a political meaning in term of Puerto Rico as a territory and the relationship with the United States.

I incorporated a big FEMA tarp that was given to me by my neighbor. My neighbor was a long time living under that tarp, but he knew that I was going to use it, in one of my compositions. Bit by bit, the objects were being found or given to me, and bit by bit, I gone constructing the composition in relationship with my own experience with the hurricane, with the experience of my community, and with the relationship of the Maria, Maria, the hurricane, as a strong force, and Maria, the one that loves and protects and everything. That's ambiguity, for me is very important. Other objects were incorporated. I also constructed object for that image.

It is the same thing with the other one. I have an idea based on my experience with this type of hurricane, and then I not yet activate my imagination. Other objects start to come, I keep on praying, and at the same time, I make drawings to be fixing the image. The drawing always came after. At the end, I completely abandoned it.

Alison Stewart: From a curator's perspective, Ruba, what do you see in Daniel's craft and in his work that makes his sculpture unique?

Ruba Katrib: I think Daniel's work is deeply profound, and the work that he described, María Guabancex, as he's talking about these objects that he found, it also includes these pieces of metal that were shaped by the force of the hurricane. It's actually like a record of the hurricane itself on the object. I think that's what's so profound is the multiple registers in which he's operating. There's this physical trace there. His materials and objects almost work like evidence. They tell stories as evidence, but they also are being brought together in these compositions that refer to the fiestas and carnival and Loíza and different traditions that Daniel's drawing on his own personal memories.

As many of his works refer to his certain impressions that he's had, and sorting out that impression from childhood to adulthood throughout his life. I think it's really those multiple registers that he really touches you with, and I think an experience of seeing his work, it's truly moving. It's very hard not to be moved by his works, because there is this power and energy.

As a curator, seeing Daniel install his works and finish these new ones, and the installation process at MoMa PS1, it's extremely meticulous. He puts so much energy and intent in these pieces, so they almost become like talismans too. They have that power of the artist embedded in them, as well as all of the sources that he draws from.

Alison Stewart: The name of the show is Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo Griot — Una historia de todos nosotros. It is at MoMa PS1. It is on view through September 4th. Thank you so much to both of you for being with us today, and congratulations on the show.

Ruba Katrib: Thank you.

Daniel Lind-Ramos: Thank you.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Tomorrow, singer-songwriter Peter One, had a successful music career in his native West Africa. After coming to the US in the 1990s, he thought it would continue, but it took a little bit longer. Now, the Nashville-based artist is out with his major label, solo debut, Come Back To Me. He joins us in studio tomorrow to talk about his career and perform live.

That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.