The Whitney Museum’s show of Puerto Rican art after Hurricane Maria is searing, angry and mournful

Ariella Budick, Financial Times, January 5, 2023

Hurricane Maria, which smashed into Puerto Rico on September 20 2017, leaving behind death and destruction, also foreshadowed a wave of further catastrophes: earthquakes, political aftershocks, a pandemic and a spasmodically functioning power grid. Even on its own, the storm would have made life on the island pretty bleak. No existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, at New York’s Whitney Museum, is a searing, angry and mournful reflection on the five years since the gods battered the archipelago. The title, taken from a poem by Raquel Salas Rivera, expresses two apparently contradictory thoughts. The first is: “The world after the hurricane no longer exists” — that is, the hurricane wiped everything away. The second is: “There’s no such thing as a post-hurricane world” — because it’s the same as it ever was. At the Whitney, these two opposite conclusions intertwine.  

 

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