no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria
Nov 23, 2022–Apr 23, 2023

Press log in Sign up for press list

Organized to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria—a high-end Category 4 storm that hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017—the Whitney presents no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria. This exhibition brings together over fifty works by an intergenerational group of more than fifteen artists from Puerto Rico and the Diaspora, recognizing the ways artists have responded to the transformative years since the hurricane. Made between 2017 and 2022, these works seek to analyze the cracks left by the storm in the very structure of Puerto Rico's politics, culture, and society through painting, video, installation, performance, poetry, and neverbefore-seen commissions. no existe un mundo poshuracán—a verse borrowed from Puerto Rican poet Raquel Salas Rivera—is the first scholarly exhibition focused on Puerto Rican art to be organized by a large U.S. museum in nearly half a century.

While the exhibition centers on Hurricane Maria, it is also defined by the larger context that surrounded and exacerbated the aftermath of the storm. This chain of events includes the austerity measures implemented by the PROMESA law (also referred to as La Junta); the deaths of 4,645 Puerto Ricans as a consequence of the hurricane; the ouster of governor Ricardo Rosselló that led to the Verano del 19 (Summer of 2019); the string of earthquakes in early 2020; the COVID-19 pandemic, and much more.

This exhibition is organized by Marcela Guerrero, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator, with Angelica Arbelaez, Rubio Butterfield Family Fellow and Sofía Silva, former Curatorial & Education Fellow in US Latinx Art.