Charles Juhaz Alvarado
July 2018
Creator of mixed-media sculptural constructions and installations, architect, and teacher. In 1988, Juhasz completed his bachelor’s degree in art and architecture and in 1994 he completed his master’s degree, both at Yale University. He has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions and at events inside and outside Puerto Rico, such as the Sao Paulo Biennial in 2002 and the Singapore Biennial in 2006, and in such international contemporary art fairs as Art Basel Miami (2005) and ARCO, in Madrid (1997). He has received academic fellowships such as the Phillip Morris Fellowship for graduate studies at Yale (1992–93) and a number of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His installations, sometimes interactive, involve subjects such as cultural hybridization, identity, and the relations of power between cultures in a time of globalization, and provoke viewers not only to be participants as they interact with the pieces but also to look beyond their experience with the work.
Transcript
CA (0:17): Puerto Rico is an island of the Caribbean. But when you grow up here, when you live here, we learn more about the history of the US than we know about the history of our area. You lose sense of the Caribbean.
CA (0:35): We know so little about our neighbors and our cultures are so similar. We have the same roots, the islands share the same people. So I thought that we needed to do a project that had to do with learning more about our neighbors. I thought, “What is what I know the least? And I think that everybody around me knows the least about?” – The answer for me was Haiti.
CA (1:00): The photograph project threads the whole exhibition. It’s mostly works by Haitian artists that were in Puerto Rico. There’s a lot of work that has to do with spirituality. So there’s a wall covered with voodoo flags, and then there's some works that have to do with government, and actually we have – in the very entrance – a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence and the flag of Haiti.
CA (1:36): There is a school that was rebuilt in Haiti after the earthquake that I thought was really key to the show. It was a project that was organized and done by a committee that came together here in Puerto Rico called El Comité de Solidaridad Con el Pueblo Haitiano.
CA (1:54): So, I did a model of the building itself and then from the scale model I projected down a bookcase. My favorite space, I guess, in the exhibition is that space, that room. El Aula. I love going in there, opening up the window, you know, feeling the trees so close, and looking through the books. Aula is a place for learning.
CA (2:45): I’m Charles Juhaz Alvarado , and I’m a sculptor, an artist.
[Noises of Charles using his pieces]
CA (3:04): Here in Puerto Rico we believe we’re kind of independent. It’s very hard for people to realize that we’re really a colony, what it means to be a colony, what it means – the way we see ourselves, how we can relate to the world, it’s a very tricky subject. Independence is always the best outcome for this historical problem. People are trying to delay something that is inevitable. We have to be ouro own country, that’s going to be better for everybody — Including the US.
[Bird Call Noises Over Credits]
