For “In Dialog with…Awilda Sterling-Duprey: (Un)Drawing the Continent Blindfolded,” José Álvarez interviews dancer, choreographer, and visible artist Awilda Sterling-Duprey for C& América Latina [translated by Sara Hanaburgh.]: “A chat with the Puerto Rican artist about her participation within the Whitney Biennial in New York, the place she performs a collection of dance-drawings.”
Born in San Juan in 1947, Awilda Sterling-Duprey is likely one of the most essential visible artists from Puerto Rico. On this interview, the Boricua artist Pepe Álvarez-Colón speaks with Sterling-Duprey about her work in abstraction, the physique’s tridimensionality and about …blindfolded, the work on exhibit on the 2022 Whitney Biennial: “Quiet as It’s Saved,” by which the artist blindfolds her eyes to attract traces on darkish papers in response to jazz improvisation.
C& América Latina: Along with your background in experimental efficiency with a neighborhood of dancers and theater artists, you additionally educated within the visible arts with a bunch of summary painters, at a time when abstraction in Puerto Rico was not thought of a nationwide artwork. When did you develop into eager about abstraction?
Awilda Sterling-Duprey: On the College of Visible Arts of Puerto Rico. I used to be a teen and I had simply graduated from the College of Puerto Rico. I didn’t know every other artwork that wasn’t conventional Puerto Rican and Latin American. On the time… we’ve got at all times been in a fierce combat with america as a result of we’re a territory, we’re a colony. Speaking about abstraction in Puerto Rico within the Nineteen Sixties was sophisticated by what we had not been in a position to obtain (politically as a rustic). So, I made a transition, however in a fierce method in direction of summary expressionism… Franz Kline is the primary artist who had an affect on me. His black work. Black and white. A fierce gesture. Little question about it. Throw out the brushstroke of paint and settle for the accident and the way in which by which it recomposes the pictorial airplane. Additionally, Kline labored whereas listening to an important African-American musician, Sonny Rollins, who used to rehearse his saxophone solos on the Brooklyn Bridge. The jazz that influenced me probably the most at the moment was straight-ahead jazz [with no influence from rock]… And it’s the apply of efficiency, which I had already built-in, … of listening and drawing, which led me to …blindfolded. [. . .]
[. . .] C&AL: Improvisation is constitutive of Afro-Caribbean traditions. How do you method improvisation from Afro-knowledge?
ASD: Improvisation is a attribute aspect of African arts. I’ve realized that in repetition there’s a second when the sample adjustments. This occurs with jazz; it occurs with sculptures of saints. Material design is nourished exactly by this alteration within the sample. I discovered quite a bit about this topic from Sylvia del Villard, from the College of Puerto Rico (Afro-Puerto Rican actress, choreographer and activist), who mentored me and taught me the worth of the whole continent and the ethnic teams which type us… She talked to me about deities and my skills for artwork, dance and my curiosity in religions. After all, it was already built-in in my household however at the moment individuals didn’t discuss African worth. So we needed to “behave nicely so individuals would respect us,” so individuals would see that we have been a unique form of Black lady or man. However Sylvia embodied the moral values of a complete continent and had been with all these Africanists at Fisk College in Tennessee, USA. And that had an affect on me… That’s what leads me to combine non secular ideas by means of dance, as a result of historical past is within the physique and in dance. Every step is a narrative of the deity that has as many ranges as the weather of nature it represents… My wholeness is seen and expressed inside all these contexts of improvisation. [. . .]
Learn full interview at https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/editorial/awilda-sterling-duprey-undrawing-the-continent-blindfolded/
[Photos by José López Serra. 1) Top image: Awilda Sterling-Duprey and Pepe Álvarez-Colón, …blindfolded for P.E.P.O.S.A (..con los ojos vendados para P.E.P.O.S.A) (2021), Platform for performance research, by Pepe Álvarez-Colón, at the gallery Hidrante, Santurce, Puerto Rico. 2) Awilda Sterling-Duprey, …blindfolded (…con los ojos vendados) (2022), Whitney Biennial, New York.]