CENTRO (Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College-CUNY) presents an Afternoon Tertulia, entitled “’Basquiat: King Pleasure’ through a Decolonial Lens,” on June 29, 2022, at 4:00pm (EST). See link below to sign up.

Description: This event will feature a conversation between Dr. Yasmin Ramírez and Dr. Frances Negrón-Muntaner as they discuss the career, legacy, and impact of Jean-Michel Basquiat as portrayed in the current exhibit: Jean Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure. Considered one of the most important artists of the late 20th Century, Basquiat’s art and lays bare the complexities of Afro-Diasporic subjectivity and visuality. As a Brooklyn native with a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian-American father, Basquiat grew up with a keen awareness of the legacies of racism and colonialism on black and brown peoples across the Atlantic. Informed by his background, Basquiat’s art reflects on issues of black history, liberation struggles, triumphs, and social inequities. Tune into this special Afternoon Tertulia to learn more about Basquiat’s lifelong legacy in the Puerto Rican, Haitian, and New York communities for decades to come.

[Additionally, you can catch a recording of Dr. Yasmin Ramirez’s last presentation on Basquiat here.]

Yasmin Ramírez is an art worker, curator, and writer based in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center, CUNY.  Born in Brooklyn, Ramirez was active in the downtown art scene of the early 1980s as a club kid and art critic for the East Village Eye. Attracted to street art and hip hop, she became acquainted with emerging artists and writers, many of whom are now icons of the 1980s. Currently an independent curator, Dr. Ramirez has collaborated on curatorial projects with The Bronx Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, The Loisaida Center, The New Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Franklin Furnace, and Taller Boricua. Her critically acclaimed exhibitions and panels include: Pasado y Present: Art after the Young Lords, 1969-2019 (2019); Home, Memory, and Future (2016); Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (2015); ¡Presente!: The Young Lords in New York (2015); The Puerto Rican Art Workers and the Construction of the Nuyorican Art Movement (2014); Re-Membering Loisaida: On Archiving and the Lure of the Retro Lens (2009); “Esto A Veces Tiene Nombre”: Latin@ Art Collectives in a Post-Movement Millennium (2008); The Boricua in Basquiat (2005); Voices From Our Communities:  Perspectives on a Decade of Collecting at El Museo del Barrio (2000); Pressing the Point: Parallel Expressions in the Graphic Arts of the Chicano and Puerto Rican Movements (1999). 

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a writer, curator, filmmaker, scholar, professor at Columbia University, and founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive. Among her books and publications are Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (CHOICE Award, 2004), The Latino Media Gap (2014), and Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism in Native Nations and Latinx America (2017). Her most recent films include Small City, Big Change (2013), War for Guam (2015) and Life Outside (2016). For her work as a scholar and filmmaker, Negrón-Muntaner has received Ford, Truman, Rockefeller, and Pew fellowships. She has similarly received various recognitions, including the United Nations’ Rapid Response Media Mechanism designation as a global expert in the areas of mass media and Latin/o American studies (2008); the Lenfest Award, one of Columbia University’s most prestigious recognitions for excellence in teaching and scholarship (2012), an inaugural OZY Educator Award (2017), the Latin American Studies Association’s Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award (2019), and the Bigs & Littles Impact Award (2020) for her work as a mentor, artist, and scholar.

Negrón-Muntaner served as director of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race from 2009-2016. She was also the director of Unpayable Debt, a working group at Columbia University that studies debt regimes in the world and lead collaborator in two of its main projects NoMoreDebt: Caribbean Syllabus (first and second edition), and Valor y Cambio (Value and Change), a storytelling and social currency project in Puerto Rico, valorycambio.com.

For more information, see https://centropr.nationbuilder.com/afternoon_tertulia_basquiat?mc_cid=d591e10553&mc_eid=c0402e4dcb