featured artists
Ana Rosa Rivera Marrero
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biography
(b. Morovis, Puerto Rico, 1967).
Rivera Marrero’s work examines historical architecture and its frequently colonial and patriarchal implications. As a Puerto Rican feminist, she engages sexual politics as well as mythological and religious symbolism. Her newest project, Carrucho (Queen Conch), investigates the meanings of the shell: armor, home, religious symbol, sexual metaphor, ubiquitous Puerto Rican animal, and Caribbean icon. Her most recent set of works in the Carrucho series, ELA, builds on these references. ELA refers to Puerto Rico’s political status, or “Estado Libre Asociado”–the irony of the “Free, Associated State.” Rivera Marrero pictures the acronym as a palidromic pun on the Spanish male and female pronouns: “He” = EL (A), and “She” = (E) LA. This work, through the metaphor of the transvestite as model, presents the idea of “having it both ways”–sexually and politically. This picture of a new sexual and political mode is both celebratory and harshly poignant. While the imagery continues to build on notions of birth, sexuality, transformation, and protection, the shell here also serves to hide the ugly truth. Recent individual exhibitions include Carrucho 2, Museo de Ballaja (San Juan, PR, 2001), Carrucho, Espacio de diseño (San Juan, PR, 2000), and A Esop A Ekirts, Liga de Arte de San Juan (San Juan, PR, 1998).Notable recent group exhibitions include Ambiguo, Fortaleza 202 del Viejo San Juan (San Juan, PR, 2000), IV Certamen Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (Santurce, PR, 2000), Arte Joven (exposición itinerante), Museo de Arte de Ponce (Ponce, PR, 2000), and Espacios en Transición-Transición en Espacio, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (Santurce, PR, 1998), Here and There/Aquí y Allá: Six Artists from San Juan (El Museo del Barrio, NY, 2001). Rivera Marrero holds her Bachelors’ degree in sculpture from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico (San Juan). She did post-graduate studies in sculpture and art theory at Yale University (New Haven, CT). Courtesy of El Museo del Barrio and Deborah Cullen at http://www.elmuseo.org/herethere
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