Cause It Might Fade Away: Four Proposals about Retrieval and Closure

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(Editor’s Note: The Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (IPRAC) opened Cause it might fade away on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 in celebration of International Women’s Day. The opening reception included an introduction from the exhibit’s curator, Brenda Torres, and poetry from Danette Sokacich, Johanny Vázquez Paz and Lourdes Matute.)

“Through the process of drawing these generic spaces, I am trying to recreate a very specific one. I am trying to rebuild my “home.” I make reference to the vibrant colors of the Caribbean tropic and the architectural details of houses I have lived in. I remake what I remember.”—Nora M. Nieves

It is not a coincidence that the artists convoked for this exhibition were all women, but also women artists born and raised in Puerto Rico that made the urban landscape of the cities of Chicago and New York their transitional residence. Inevitably, during that process they retrieved and reconstructed reminiscences of somewhat and someplace familiar, but some other times unrecognizable, called home.

The exhibition Cause it might fade away: four proposals about retrieval and closure at the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (IPRAC) captures four artists Nora Maite Nieves, Kristine Serviá, Marisol Plard Narváez, Migdalia Barens Vera and curator Brenda Torres Figueroa in an inevitable conversation about how personal memories, the passage of time and the idea of “home” are collected, addressed and can be reestablished as a universal human condition.

Each visual statement proposed for this exchange is embedded with subtle symbolism, very distinctive to each artist. Through mapping and haunting timelines without beginning or an end; through an assemblage of reconstructed grounds that allow us to recognize all the steps we made; through a contained shadow outlining an unfamiliar sight; though the last remembrance that assumes the shape of an abandoned garment that longs, transits and remains untouched.

The exhibition Cause it might fade away: four proposals about retrieval and closure is part of the commemoration of International Women’s Day at IPRAC and will be open to the public until the end of March 2011.

Brenda Torres