Aesthetics of disaster as decolonial aesthetics
Making sense of the effects of Hurricane María through Puerto Rican contemporary art
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18967156 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carlos Rivera-Santana (City University of New York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 341-362 |
| Publication date | 2020-05-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0950-2386 • E-ISSN: 1466-4348 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09502386.2019.1607519 |
| OpenAlex | W2942616651 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 16 |
On 20 September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico causing unprecedented disaster. From that day onwards, the Puerto Rican multi-layered colonial, social and political context was further complicated by the traumatic acceleration of a human disaster via this natural disaster. This crystalized the urgency of using art as vehicle for (social) catharsis, a practice that continues to be used by individual artists, collectives, community organizations, art projects, and other art institutions on the island and abroad, through mural art, community paintings, art exhibitions, literature, music, and many other aesthetic expressions. This article examines, from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective, post-Hurricane María artistic expressions in contemporary art as decolonial aesthetics through the cathartic use of the frame of an aesthetics of disaster. It is argued that, an aesthetics of disaster aims to re-assert an artistic form that is able to accelerate the discursive nullification of a deeply rooted colonial, social and cultural problem by way of art as catharsis inspired by the way that Hurricane María unveiled these problems. The piece briefly contextualizes Puerto Rico, and it examines the idea of Puerto Rican contemporary art as catharsis. Then, it describes how Puerto Rican contemporary art exhibitions and associated aesthetic production are processing urgent post-hurricane issues through three illustrative pieces in exhibitions in PR and abroad in the United States (US). Lastly, decolonial aesthetics is reexamined and re-understood, informed by Édouard Glissant's view expressed in Poetics of Relation which aids to the conclusion that Puerto Rican contemporary art using the frame of an aesthetics of disaster functions as a powerful form of decolonial aesthetics
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Catharsis · Colonialism · Contemporary art · Exhibition · Literature · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Visual arts · Disaster Management and Resilience · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Afterlives of Anticolonial Dissent
Counterpublics and Hegemonic Ideology
Representing Recovery
The Gifts of the Hurricane
Expanding the transdisciplinary conversation towards pluriversal distributive disaster recovery
(In)Visibilization through decolonial delinking? Disrupting the permanently neglected disaster at the border of Colombia and Ecuador
Archaeology of Two Pandemics and Teranga Aesthetic
Islands, the Anthropocene, and Decolonisation
General History of the Caribbean
Interview
Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria
Popular music and society
Postcolonial Thought in the French Speaking World
The Order of Things
PROMESA, Puerto Rico and the American Empire
Monstrous Anthropology
The Lives of a Nightclub
The Aesthetics of Disaster
Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality
On the Coloniality of Being
| Citations per year | 1.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2023 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |