22 FRIDAY AT 4 PM – 6 PM Serda Yalkin “Diasporic Visions: Nuyorican Photography in the 1970s and 1980s”
Art History Department Colloquium
October 22, 2021
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Address
Chicago, IL 60612
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In the 1970s and 1980s, Nuyorican (New York-born or residing Puerto Rican) artists embraced the photographic medium as a tool for self-representation, reimagining urban diasporic experience and space. This talk excavates photography as a diasporic practice during the period referred to as el nuevo despertar (the new awakening) of Puerto Rican political consciousness and cultural pride. It examines how photographers including Perla de León and Hiram Maristany articulated trans-Caribbean ideas of domesticity in the public sphere and used formal experiments to emphasize the surface of the image as a site of resistance that challenged the blighted image of the barrio. Additionally, through an expanded framework of the photographic, this talk explores how the act of photographing, display, technical instruction, and community engagement embraced by the projects of the En Foco collective and Frank Espada advanced an idea of the community service of photography. By foregrounding the medium’s role in Nuyorican worldmaking, this talk proposes the camera as an adept apparatus for the production of identity, arguing that photography opens a broader view onto diaspora as a visual condition.
Serda Yalkin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. She holds an MA in the Arts of the Americas from the University of New Mexico and a BA in Art History from Bard College. Prior to starting her doctorate at Duke, she was the Curatorial Assistant for the Arts of the Americas and European collections at the Brooklyn Museum.
Please email arthistory@uic.edu for the Zoom link!
Date posted
Oct 18, 2021
Date updated
Oct 18, 2021