Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico
Aug 19, 2023 - May 05, 2024
About the Exhibition
Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico examines the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago. Featuring a wide range of mediums by an intergenerational group of artists with close ties to Chicago, the exhibition presents Puerto Rican painters who use printmaking techniques and approaches alongside artists who address social and political issues through their work.
The exhibition also centers Chicago as the city that for decades has championed national conversations on Puerto Rican self-determination and Latine issues, such as immigration and bilingual education. It features a selection of materials documenting the social movements and community organizations that advocated for the rights of underrepresented Latine communities, including historic photographs and other ephemera that tell the story of the anticolonial resistance and transcultural solidarities in the Puerto Rican community in Chicago. Starting with the Young Lords, which was founded in Chicago in the 1960s as part of broader national civil rights movements, Entre Horizontes includes documentation of the Division Street and Humboldt Park rebellions, the relentless advocacy for the liberation of Puerto Rican political prisoners, and the unprecedented activism that founded the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.
The title of the exhibition, Entre Horizontes (between horizons), draws on another point of connection between these two places. While geographically distinct, the horizon lines over the waters of Lake Michigan and the Caribbean appear as sites of memory and longing to Puerto Rican Chicagoans. By bridging these two horizons, the exhibition traces correspondences across not only visual art and social justice, but also place and identity.
Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico is curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, with Iris Colburn, Curatorial Assistant. The exhibition is designed by SKETCH | Johann Wolfschoon, Panamá.
Funding
Lead support is provided by the Mellon Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Major support is provided by Jana and Bernardo Hees.
This exhibition is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that aims to expand understandings of Chicago’s creative communities, past and present.
