What do you think of when you think of the Dominican Republic? Maybe baseball or merengue. Maybe you think of sunny beaches overlooking a turquoise ocean? You likely don’t think of contemporary art.
“We are merengue. We are tobacco. We are bananas and we are much much more. But you have to discover it, you know,” says Belkis Ramirez, one of the four artists in the Dominican artists collective Quintapata.
She says the collective is trying to debunk the idea that Caribbean artists don’t make thoughtful, modern work. You can see some of that work in Quintapata’s upcoming exhibitat Western Michigan University at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts' Monroe-Brown Gallery. The exhibit opens with a panel discussion on September 10th at 5:30 p.m.
The highlight of the exhibit is Quintapata’s collaborative piece called DNA. It’s a little room inside the gallery with four screens, on each one an actor recites rules for chewing gum in Spanish. WMU director of exhibitions, Don Desmett, read off some of the English subtitles:
“Never throw away a piece of gum from a moving airplane. Do not mix the round pieces of gum with the square ones,” Desmett reads.
Pascal Meccariello of Quintapata says there are about 200 rules in all. Some are taken from real social faux pas about chewing gum and some they made up. Meccariello says the piece represents social norms all over the world.
“There’s many rules in the social life that they don’t have sense but they are mandatory,” he says.
Now here’s the fun part—visitors to the exhibit are supposed to take a piece of gum from one of the candy jars, chew it, and then put the gum on one of the screens. Ramirez says it’s kind of a way to “stick it to the man”…or in this case, stick it on the man.
“You say how I can chew the gum and I say, ‘You, this not your business.’ And I put a gum in your face. At the end it’s supposed to be like a mask,” she says.
Meccariello says Quintapata wants to get the public involved in their art. A few years ago, they packed a Santo Domingo town square with people holding mirrors. Meccariello says the idea was to illuminate important architectural landmarks in the city that had fallen into disrepair - and it worked.
“Tourist ministry is now renovating the old part of the city. And as part of the renovation of the city, they try to integrate artists to collaborate to make cultural life in the environment of the city,” he says.
While the chewing gum piece is the only collaborative project at the WMU exhibit, Quintapata’s individual works are just as thought-provoking.
Belkis Ramirez’s piece is a towering archway in the middle of the gallery. It’s made of what looks like colorful building blocks with numbers, letters, and faces. Ramirez says the work is about how humans have done so much damage to the planet and that it’s time we re-learn how to take care of it.
“The name of this piece is ‘Rebuilding Us’ because we have to start to the first level to make it well,” she explains.
Meccariello’s piece has a more somber tone. Several wash basins sit on pedestals. Inside the basins are pictures of hands illuminated by green light. On top of the basins are pieces of clear plastic with different figurines on them.
Each figure represents a person trying to uphold their expected roles in the Catholic church. There’s a priest, a married couple, a politician, and others. Meccariello says each one is hiding something.
Maybe it’s a couple involved in an unhappy marriage, or someone who has a child before they’re ready because they think it’s the normal thing to do.
“But in the normal, there is a lot of wrong things,” he says.
The Quintapata exhibit will be in WMU's RCVA Monroe-Brown Gallery until November 6th.
