HOMENAJE: The Traveling Exhibit Honoring Our Puerto Rican and Nuyorican Heroes

HOMENAJE: The Traveling Exhibit Honoring Our Puerto Rican and Nuyorican Heroes

This traveling exhibit, consisting of 17 by 11 horizontal posters, pays tribute and homage to those Puerto Ricans and Nuyoricans who have paved the way for others over the past twenty to sixty years and who are still in the forefront of the fight for recognition, parity, and equity for all Puerto Ricans. The heroes featured in HOMENAJE are our Puerto Rican heroes, and they are and have been our voices. The exhibit introduces our heroes to a new generation of Puerto Ricans throughout New York City. To that end, each portrait is accompanied by a loosely biographical story that reveals each hero’s unique personality and idiosyncrasies. The posters are strung together in different configurations using clotheslines and clothespins—reminiscent of how clothes were dried in the old days from tenement windows and how clothes are still dried in many places in Puerto Rico. Some of the cultural icons who are featured in HOMENAJE include writers/poets Nicholasa Mohr, Miguel Algarín, Dr. Nancy Mercado, Dr. Myrna Nieves and Jesús Papoleto Meléndez; opera singer Eva de la O; musicians Johnny Colón, Bobby Sanabria and Orlando Marín; artists Marcos Dimas and Nitza Tufiño; activists Terésa Santiago, Sery Colón and Jaime Estades; choreographers Merián Sóto and Arthur Áviles; and boxer Carlos Ortiz.

HOMENAJE is a traveling exhibit, a modern take on the original groundwork laid by the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. It will tour different Puerto Rican neighborhoods in New York City—from community centers to bodegas to galleries to senior centers to museums to local colleges and schools to local teen hangouts. Instead of asking Puerto Ricans to go to a gallery or museum to see the work, the exhibition visits the typical  Puerto Rican in his/her own Puerto Rican neighborhood.

For more information on the exhibit, go to Homenaje: A Traveling Homage to Our Puerto Rican Heroes and Facebook.

Viewing hours by appointment only, for more info email: alejandro@loisaida.org