English

DANIEL LIND-RAMOS: STORAGE OF MEMORY

By Diógenes Ballester

Marlborough Gallery in New York, presents Armario de la Memoria (Storage of Memory), a solo exhibition of large-scale assemblages by the celebrated Puerto Rican artist Daniel Lind-Ramos (b. 1953, lives and works in Loíza, Puerto Rico).

Lind-Ramos has always told powerful stories through his works of art. It’s no wonder as oral, culinary, musical and visual storytelling are part of his Afro-descendent history and fundamental to his philosophy of being.

Vista de la exposición “Armario de la memoria”, de Daniel Lind-Ramos, en Marlborough Gallery, Nueva York, 2020. Foto: Pierre Le Hors. — Installation View. “Armario de la memoria”, by Daniel Lind-Ramos, Marlborough Gallery, New York, 2020. Photo: Pierre Le Hors.

As evident in the seven pieces exhibited here, Lind-Ramos’ sculptures have a powerful spirit-like presence portraying strength, potency, and depth. Each piece conveys a very particular story through the careful selection and use of materials.

The stories Lind-Ramos tells through his work are rooted with his ancestors, rooted in nature, rooted in the work performed by his people, rooted to their pastimes and pleasures—particularly music—that sustained the spirit of a once enslaved and Cimarrón community.

The sculptures are composed using found and gifted objects remembered from his childhood; pieces or composites of musical instruments; and the everyday tools of cultivation, construction, cooking, and housework. With these simple materials, he creates profoundly authentic sculptures that speak to a history not written in the textbooks of dominant culture.María-María, which was included in the Whitney Biennial of 2019, is an excellent example of his “resistance through remembering” and the complexity of such remembrances.

The sculpture stands tall and powerful as a defiant reminder of the catastrophic 2017 hurricane and its aftermath in Puerto Rico. María is both the protector and the destructor. The Virgin, with her traditional blue cloak represented by a FEMA-issued tarp and as the bringer of torrential winds and water. María-María speaks to both the protection offered to the people living in damaged roofless homes and, especially as time progressed and the tarps became tattered and weather beaten, the inadequate protection, neglect and power imbalance in the U.S./Puerto Rican colonial relationship.