Máximo Rafael Colón: Storied Lens
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 14 @ 6:00 - 9:00 PM
When: November 14, 2024 – January 15, 2025
Where: The Tamayo Gallery in Teatro LATEA @ The Clemente
107 Suffolk Street, NYC
Curators: Mercedes Trelles and Miguel Trelles
Artist: Máximo Rafael Colón
Máximo Rafael Colón: Storied Lens is presented with support from Historias, a multi-year programmatic initiative led by The Clemente in partnership with LxNY and supported by the Rauschenberg Foundation. Historias charts the transformative impact of Latinx communities in NYC through research, artistic interpretations, and public engagement.
Join us for the XIXth Edition of BORIMIX: Nuyorican Splendor, celebrating the agency and the trailblazing trajectory of Puerto Ricans in New York. The BORIMIX Visual Arts Exhibition, Storied Lens, is co-curated by Mercedes Trelles and Miguel Trelles, and will feature the work of trailblazing photographer, Máximo Rafael Colón.
"People are constantly going on about the flag. And that’s a starting point, a way of being proud. But I wish they would identify with the history."
- Máximo Rafael Colón
This selection of photographs from photographer Máximo Rafael Colón’s vast oeuvre demonstrates Colón’s commitment to politics, portraiture, and the “cultural provocateurs”: the people who ignited and kept the flame of Puerto Rican culture in New York through institutions like Taller Boricua, the Nuyorian Poet’s Café and New York’s rich music and festival scene. The selection, from Máximo’s personal archive, also constitutes a love letter to analogue photography and the information rich, uncropped print that relies on the precise moment.
Harking from " la Villa del Capitán Correa", Arecibo/Puerto Rico, Máximo Rafael Colón moved to New York at a young age. He started his formal training in the "darkroom arts" at the School of Visual Arts and from the get go a unique trajectory started: Colón's profound concern with social justice has been portrayed by documentary photographs of sit-ins, the emergence of the Young Lords and the clamor of Latinos demanding equal rights. His images capture a period of upheaval and political ferment reflecting an unwavering commitment to Puerto Rican Nationalism and the struggle for the liberation of imprisoned Nationalists such as Carlos Feliciano, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda and Irvin Flores Rodríguez.
Colón's work was featured in the landmark photographic exhibition, Dos Mundos (1973) organized by the Institute of Contemporary Hispanic Art. He has participated in various prestigious exhibitions, among them, !Presente! The Young Lords (2015) at the Bronx Museum, the Museo del Barrio and the Loisaida Art Center, as well as Ida y Vuelta (2017) organized by the Museo de Antropología, Historia y Arte UPR, CitiCien, 100 artistas 100 años del Jones Act (2018) at the Clemente Soto Vélez, Casa Ruth and Taller Boricua, and El sujeto develado (2019) at the Museo de Arte Dr. Pío López Martínez.
Check out our website calendar for Sharing the Spotlight, a conversation series by emerging Latinx artists/photographers to run in tandem with the Storied Lens exhibition. The talks will feature emerging photographers handpicked by Máximo Rafael Colón including Destiny Mata, Amy Ponce, Mario Rubén Carrión, Maylyn "Zero" Iglesias, and Jon Ferrer, and are co-presented by Teatro LATEA and Historias.