Four Pioneers of the Nuyorican Art Movement    Present "Upside"  and"Homenaje Alma Boricua: 30th Anniversary Portfolio" at

Taller Boricua/Puerto Rican Workshop

Upside

Upside is a rock band, a software company and the current positive indicator for real estate speculators looking at El Barrio. It is also an attitude, a signal that means that local residents intend to benefit from the real estate phenomenon that they laboriously helped to create.  

Like many neighborhoods in the Big Apple that have served as welcoming portals to millions of immigrants, East Harlem has seen its share of cycles of urban expansion, decay, and eventual renewal.   The four artists / pioneers exhibiting in Upside - Diogenes Ballester, Marcos Dimas, Fernando Salicrup and Nitza Tufiño - have been more than passive witnesses to these transformative urban waves, they have helped promote positive change through conscious acts that helped to turn redlined and decaying buildings into neighborhoods that could support families. Paradoxically, their cultural work is one of the contributing factors calling the attention of speculators that are now driving property values through the roof.  

Thirty-five years ago the founders of El Taller Boricua (The Puerto Rican Workshop) proclaimed their intention to promote cultural awareness through the programs established and undertaken for the residents of El Barrio - with no government or philanthropic support.   They took over a storefront and created an exhibition space to show the works of Puerto Rican artists from both New York and Puerto Rico.   Marcos Dimas was one of the original founders of El Taller, along with Carlos Osorio, and Rafael Tufiño, among others. As the number of artists grew, they found loft space and carved out exhibition and workshop spaces where artists could create and also teach art, teach how to value life and community, and disseminate the great lesson of self-respect.  

For many decades, the combined effect of joblessness, poverty, drugs, redlining and crumbling buildings seemed to create a moat around El Barrio, an invisible but resilient border that made the north side of 96th Street the undeclared southern border of "Spanish Harlem," a line that repelled taxi drivers like insect repellents repel mosquitoes.  

This oppression of poverty was often a great burden to many local residents who dreamed of leaving the neighborhood, as is immortalized in this fragment from the great poem by Pedro Piietri, "The Puerto Rican Obituary":

'Juan Miguel Milagros Olga Manuel All died yesterday today and will die again tomorrow Dreaming Dreaming about Queens Clean-cut lily-white neighborhood Puerto Ricanless scene Thirty-thousand-dollar home The first spics on the block Proud to belong to a community of gringos who want them lynched Proud to be a long distance away from the sacred phrase: Que Pasa'    

But the community vision promoted by Puerto Rican and Latino artists, often articulated by Fernando Salicrup and Nitza Tufiño, and supported by a select number of public officials and civic leaders, gave importance to improving educational and cultural opportunities for local residents, and activists fought for and founded El Museo del Barrio, expanded El Taller Boricua, adopted the plan to extend the Museum Mile along 106th Street in what is known today as the Cultural Corridor, and founded the Julia de Burgos Cultural Center. More artists were attracted, like Diogenes Ballester and others who became successful, made conscious decisions to stay in El Barrio - fighting for improvements, one building or business establishment at a time.  

The artists exhibiting in Upside, are a special breed, they are true to their aesthetic work and spend long hours in their studios creating but they are not divorced from the outside world.   Their vision and definition of what constitutes an artist is not elitist or isolationist - dedication to one's craft does not preclude their seriousness in strengthening the community. They serve as prime examples of the importance of determination and clarity of focus in combating an oppressive status quo.   If there is an "upside" to living in El Barrio, it is to a large extent due to those residents who fought to create and maintain a community out of the malaise that long predominated the area.  

There most definitely is an upside to El Barrio today...and these artists are saying loud and clear that Latinos will be part of this scene tomorrow.    

Luis R. Cancel

Former Commissioner,

New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and independent curator