Diogenes Ballester is certainly counting his blessings these days. After a midnight fire swept through his East Harlem studio on January 30, the Puerto Rican artist has been overwhelmed with support from colleagues and neighbors that have come to his aid.
Although no one was harmed during the blaze, which is still under investigation, among the items destroyed were the artist’s entire collection of catalogues from shows around the world, along with many older prints and uncompleted newer works. Also ruined were a number of historical documents chronicling important East Harlem events. Luckily, the bulk of Ballester’s artwork was already en route to Puerto Rico for an upcoming exhibit.
“First of all, I’m very happy that everyone’s alive in the building and in the whole block because it could have been worse,” said the artist, who continues to prepare for an upcoming show at the Ponce History Museum (Museo de la Historia de Ponce) in Puerto Rico. “I lost a lot, but I have to transform energy, instead of dealing with the negative. That is what inspires me to keep going.”
Although his artwork was not insured, many surviving smoke-damaged canvasses will need cleaning and restoration. And while he expects that his 106th Street studio will be repaired by the building owner, Ballester is now seeking more affordable workspace in the neighborhood.
Diogenes concludes. “Maybe this happened for a reason. Even with gentrification, we still have this very strong sense of community here in East Harlem that has given me a hand on many levels.” The artist’s network certainly includes neighbors such as Federico Colon, and others, who spent the weekend helping Ballester move his surviving work into storage space donated by Taller Boricua/Puerto Rican Workshop.
Ballester, who just turned 50, recently won an Individual Artist Award from the New York State Council on the Arts for the creation of an Oral History/Digital Book on African-Catholic-Taino religious expressions within Puerto Rican families. Ever busy, the artist is also preparing for an August show at the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in East Harlem, which is part of a traveling exhibition that concludes at the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico.
In addition, Diogenes and his wife, artist Mary Bonché, are compiling a book on his work to be presented at a Latin American Stories Association conference in March which includes syncretic oral histories gathered by Ballester in East Harlem, Paris, Haiti, Cuba and Puerto Rico from the 1980s to the present.
Most recently, Diogenes exhibited a multi-media collection, “La Promesa de Mi Tía Ketty” (“The Promise of My Aunt Ketty”), at the Carlos Rios Seniors Residence in East Harlem where he and filmmaker Judith Escalona also recorded residents as they shared their personal histories. Those pieces are now on display, alongside works by local artists Roger Caban, Fernando Salicrup, Franklin Flores, and Marcos Dimas, in a show, “Los Muchachos del Barrio,” at Bonito Restaurant on East 126th Street.
Despite his misfortune, Diogenes says he intends to remain in East Harlem. “When I first came to New York in 1981, Franklin Flores and others took me around and I saw a lot of artists here and that always motivated me,” he explains. “I think el Barrio is a very special place for any artist. El Barrio for me is an incomplete project.”
About the Artist
Diogenes Ballester
Painter, born 1956, Playa de Ponce, Puerto Rico
Diogenes Ballester is internationally renowned for his painting, drawing and installations. Born 1956 in Playa de Ponce, Puerto Rico of Afro-Caribbean descent, he first moved to New York in 1981 to join a burgeoning art scene. He was an artist-in-residence for printmaker Robert Blackburn and by 1982 he had his first solo exhibition in New York at the Cayman Gallery. Leaving New York for nearly five years, he returned Spanish Harlem to a studio on 106th Street, where he continues to work today. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Bronx Museum in New York, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and the Instituto per la Cultura e L’ Arte, Catania, Italy.
Upon receiving the Arana Foundation Award in 1999, Ballester went to Paris to paint. It is there that he found himself reaffirming his African identity, which becomes a point of departure for his later installations in Haiti, Cuba and San Francisco. The installation entitled Globalization, Post-industrialism and Syncretism was exhibited at the Casa de las Americas in Havana during the symposium the Myth of the Caribbean. It was further re-defined and presented at the Museum of Art in Port-au-Prince, Haiti for the Multicultural Forum of Contemporary Art in 2000. The installation in San Francisco is entitled Fertility in response to the gross number of fatalities in Africa due to AIDS.
In September 2001, Ballester was one of seven visual artists joined by seven poets to exhibit in A Collaborative Digital Print Portfolio Between Visual Artists and Poets presented at the XIII San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Printmaking in Puerto Rico. He was invited to address the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Southern Caribbean Symposium entitled Migration and Diaspora in Caribbean Art, where he spoke about the aesthetic development of Puerto Rican visual arts in New York as part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Concurrently, an edited excerpt of this address was published in the Alma Boricua catalogue in 2001. Ballester has continued to receive awards for his work, including honorable mention in drawing at the Tenth International Print and Drawing Exhibition in Taipei (2001) and the Gold Medal in painting at the Third Caribbean and Central American Biennial of Painting in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic (1996).
Bio courtesy of PR Dream.