Julia P. Herzberg is an art historian, independent curator, and Fulbright Senior Specialist living in New York. She completed her PhD in art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in 1998, with a dissertation on Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. She is a specialist of Latin American artists living in the United States, and has curated more than twenty-five exhibitions. Herzberg was a co-curator of The Decade Show (1990), held in New York at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, the New Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and she was the curator of the official U.S. representation for the III Bienal Internacional de Pintura in Cuenca, Ecuador (1991). In addition to serving as a consulting curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York (1996–2001), she was a consulting curator for the 2003, 2006, and 2009 Bienales de La Habana, and she is a contributing and consulting editor for Arte al día Internacional. Herzberg has taught, lectured, and published extensively in the United States and abroad and received two J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board awards: one at the Pontificia Universidad Católica (2007) and another at the Universidad Diego Portales (2013), both in Santiago, Chile, and also served as a visiting professor at the Instituto de Arte, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile (2016).
With the exception of Osorio (Puerto Rican) and Galino (Guatemalan), all the mentioned artists are Cuban-born. Ernesto Pujol (b. 1957) is a former Trappist monk and United States–based artist with an interdisciplinary art practice that reflects on spirituality and identity. In the exhibition, he is photographed taking a silent, contemplative walk in a Civil War–era cemetery, as a reflection on mourning and reconciliation. María Magdalena Campos-Pons (b. 1959) is a multimedia artist based in the United States whose work addresses the histories of the transatlantic slave trade, Catholic and Santería spiritual practices, and revolutions and uprisings that she documents here through means of photography. José Bedia (b. 1959), an initiate in the Cuban Palo religion, is a contemporary painter known for his “Neo-Primitive” figurative style; for this exhibition he created a multimedia installation that explores ritualistic practices in Plains Indian cultures as well as the Cuban ones he is part of. Pepón Osorio (b. 1955) is a United States–based artist well-known for his large-scale, multimedia installations stemming from his involvement with local United States-Puerto Rican communities; in this case he situated his work in nonart spaces, including in a former barbershop. Tania Bruguera (b. 1968) is a performance and installation artist whose work addresses state power and the relationship between art and activism; here, she took well-known speeches by iconic historical figures (Churchill, Einstein, and Hitler) and removed their words, translating them into rhythms, which are clapped at different volumes by performers. Regina José Galindo (b. 1974) is a performance artist who tests her body’s limits in order to comment on gender and state violence; in her presentation, she positions herself as a victim of torture—she is waterboarded, hosed with ice water, and shot with a stun gun—to comment on ritualistic state-sponsored abuse. Ana Mendieta (1948–85) was a multimedia body artist interested in the relationship among the female body, identity, and nature; in this exhibition, she explored nature’s spiritual regenerative forces through figural imprints in the earth made of natural materials and fire.
This exhibition essay discusses several Central American and Caribbean artists included in the larger group exhibition NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith co-organized by the Menil Collection (Houston, Texas) and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), and curated by Menil curator of modern and contemporary art, Franklin Sirmans. The exhibition took place at the Menil Collection from June 27 to September 21, 2008, at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center from October 19, 2008, to January 26, 2009, and at the Miami Art Museum from February 20 to May 24, 2009. The exhibition, based on the Menil Collection’s holdings, brought together a multigenerational group of artists from across the Americas who addressed the use of ritual in the artistic process and the implications of spirituality in contemporary art. It contained fifty works of sculpture, photography, assemblage, video, performance, and other media. In addition to the artists mentioned in the essay, the exhibition also included other Latin American/Latino artists such as Marepe, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Amalia Mesa-Bains, as well as American artists including Janine Antoni, Sanford Biggers, Jimmie Durham, David Hammons, Betye Saar, and Adrian Piper.
