Jose-Luis Vargas
July 2018
Painter and performance artist José Luis Vargas depicts figures reflective of the Caribbean in works that contain humor, supernatural elements, cultural mythology, and symbols of his native Puerto Rico. Works such as No lo hagas (Don’t do it) (2014) incorporate a playfulness through the inclusion of comic strip speech bubbles. In other pieces, he incorporates local supernatural ideology to preserve the myths and serve as a platform for viewers to contemplate their assumptions. Many of the artist’s works focus on the admiration and revision of Haitian street paintings collected by tourists that contrast with the country’s turmoil while also injecting his own commentary on colonialism in Puerto Rico. Vargas earned a BFA at the Pratt Institute and an MFA from the Royal College of Arts. He also studied at the Art Students League in Old San Juan and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work is in the collections of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, and the Royal College of Art.
Transcript
José Luis Vargas (0:10); María was a paradigm shift. Every single natural disaster is a paradigm shift. The hurricane was able to bring things to the surface, like the depth of the crisis– not the economic crisis. Puerto Rico is a big humanitarian crisis from the beginning. We shouldn’t forget about the history of colonialism. If you belong to a territory that doesn’t belong to you there is no sense of belonging. I think that when we are able to understand that, then we can start to unravel the complexity of why Puerto Ricans are the way they are in relation to that history.
JLV (1:04): When I moved to England and when I was in Spain, I was the immigrant. I wasn’t the immigrant of running from a war, but then I thought “José, you were running from a war!” Because that’s what people don’t want to talk about in Puerto Rico: The internal war that Puerto Ricans have with themselves. Colonialism is successful when they put the persons they’re colonizing against each other. So the colonizer becomes invisible.
JLV (1:35): When we talk about science fiction, science fiction was interesting because science fiction started with the idea of some entity from outer space coming to the world and colonizing people, like H.G. Wells and War of the Worlds. It’s a very interesting example of the colonizer putting himself into the role of the victim. When I read about science fiction, and I put some elements of science fiction, I do think a lot about who is being colonized here.
JLV (2:18): These last paintings I’ve been doing before and after the hurricane, they’re very confrontational. This is confronting this person with the idea of “There’s nothing else to do.” So, this big arm [laughs] that has all these like nerves and skin flying all over: Although it might feel vulnerable, it’s an image of power. If we talk about visualizing: How do we visualize ourselves in the future? That’s a very important thing to do, because if you are going to build the future, you gotta have an idea. You gotta have an image. And then you move from that image, you move and then — How do we get there?
