The Dr. Pío López Martínez Museum of Art of the University of Puerto Rico in Cayey (UPR-Cayey) announced the publication of the book El sujeto develado. Autoimagen y fotografía contemporánea en Puerto Rico [The Subject Revealed. Self-Representation and Contemporary Photography in Puerto Rico] which addresses the research that led to the eponymous exhibition at the university museum in 2019.

The publication, which is sponsored by the Puerto Rican Foundation for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, presents an essay by the project’s curator, Mariel Quiñones Vélez, in which she discusses and revalues contemporary artistic production in Puerto Rico around photography and self-representation.

This bilingual work has 150 pages with color illustrations. The printing and binding was carried out at the UPR-Cayey Graphic and Printed Arts Workshop. Graphic artist Wilma Guzmán did the design; and UPR professors Dr. José Pérez Pelay and Dr. David Auerbach did the edition and the English translation, respectively.

“The publication presents and discusses the production of Puerto Rican artists whose photographic work, both in its traditional form and in its integration with other techniques, is part of an exercise in introspection and observation around themes that include self-representation and the autobiographical, the body and the nude, feminist discourse, social and political criticism, identity, gender, emigration, historical review, and humor,” said Mariel Quiñones, curator and coordinator of the book.

The work includes the participation of the following artists: Máximo Rafael Colón, Arnaldo Cotto, Brenda Cruz, Bárbara Díaz Tapia, Elizam Escobar, Mónica Félix, Ramón Frade, Yamcy Leslie, Teresa López, Catherine Matos Olivo, Héctor Méndez Caratini, Nina Méndez Martí, Freddie Mercado, Néstor Millán, Rafael J. Miranda Mattei, Carmen Mojica, Lilliam Nieves, Marta Mabel Pérez, Farrique Pesquera, Quintín Rivera Toro, Herminio Rodríguez, Carlos Ruiz Valarino, Raquel Torres Arzola, Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez.

Dr. Laura Bravo, professor of the Art History Program at the School of Humanities of the UPR-Río Piedras and contemporary photography specialist, said, “The exhibition and the text that supports the publication are faithful to the narrative diversity that is found in the self-portrait or the photographic self-image in Puerto Rico. The argument on which the curatorial text of Mariel Quiñones is based in El sujeto develado offers a proposal of great value for the history of contemporary art, and I am not saying the history of photography itself, but rather, the history of art in Puerto Rico.”

For more information, see https://repositorio.upr.edu/handle/11721/2837