Eye of the Storm

On 'no existe un mundo poshuracán' at the Whitney Museum

Gabriella N. Báez, Ojalá nos encontremos en el mar (Hopefully, We’ll Meet at Sea), 2018–

“If Maria is a teacher, this emerging movement argues, the storm’s overarching lesson is that now is not the moment for reconstruction of what was, but rather for transformation into what could be.” — Naomi Klein, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On Disaster Capitalists, 2018

When a storm system forms, it begins with heat intensifying under the ocean’s surface and the rise of humid air gaining momentum through the spin of clouds caught in its pressure system. So, too, had disasters been brewing in Puerto Rico long before the monumental bands of Hurricane Maria charted a fatal trajectory to the island’s shores.

no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria opened at the Whitney months after the 5th anniversary of the storm’s landfall. Its selection of 50 artworks—spanning video, painting, sculpture, and textiles—were made by artists living in Puerto Rico and across the diaspora between 2017 and 2022. Although the show originates at Hurricane Maria’s immediate aftermath, the narratives of devastation depicted in these works go back decades, if not centuries, situating Puerto Rico’s present strife within a larger colonial history of political oppression and socioeconomic precarity enabled by its status as an unincorporated territory. In no existe un mundo poshuracán, the storm is not just a literal disaster but a symbolic one.

The exhibition is presented in 5 sections: “Fractured Infrastructures,” “Critiques of Tourism,” “Processing, Grieving, and Reflecting,” “Ecology and Landscape,” and “Resistance and Protest.” However the open floor plan facilitates a fluid overlap of these themes, revealing slippages and interconnections between pre-Maria crises and new ones. Artworks like Sofía Córdova’s video dawn_chorus ii: el niagara en bicicleta, which features footage from her family in the days after the storm, and Gabriella’s Untitled (Valora tu mentira americana), a damaged electricity pole with a battered propaganda sign from a pre-Maria referendum dramatically suspended in mid-air, meditate on the island’s grid failures and infrastructural collapse. Sofía Gallisá Muriente’s B-Roll, made with clips from tourism advertisements funded by the government, reflects on how Puerto Rico has been marketed as a ‘fantasy island’ for the ultra-wealthy, leading to neocolonial privatization.

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Untitled (Valora tu mentira americana), 2018

Ecological grief emanates from no existe, a deep mourning “felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses.” Javier Orfon’s installation Bienteveo features leaves carved with phrases taken from interviews with park rangers and environmentalists about how pollutive industries have scarred local biodiversity. Sofia Gallisa Muriente’s Celaje materializes the island’s environmental destruction with expired, salt-corroded film moldy from tropical humidity. Frances Gallardo’s Aerosoles show how climate change has increased Saharan dust storms and worsened air pollution, making visible the invisible specter of environmental racism.

Another gallery showcases the island’s more recent upheaval during the COVID-19 pandemic and its debt crisis, placing 5 years of compounded crises and political action into tight dialogues with each other. Danielle De Jesus’s painting Google the Ponce Massacre compares the 1937 attack with the Verano del 19 protests that ousted then-Governor Ricardo Rosselló. Posters by graphic designer Garvin Sierra Vega show how activism went beyond the storm to address LGBTQ rights and gender-based violence. Elle Perez’s film Wednesday, Friday documents a street fiesta where, despite blackouts and brownouts, residents dance under car headlights in joyous protest. Miguel Luciano’s Shields / Escudos are constructed from decommissioned school buses due to school closures and mass migrations off the island, decorated black and white Puerto Rican flags symbolic of anti-colonial resistance.