Curated by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo and Aurora Santiago Ortiz, the exhibition “cuestiones caribeñas/caribbean matters: assemblage and sculpture by pablo delano” opened at the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison (750 University Avenue) on August 11, and it will remain on view until December 14, 2025. [For exhibition description, visit Chazen.caribbean matters/cuestiones caribeñas or see our previous post Pablo Delano Centers Complex Caribbean Histories.]
On September 18, 2025, at 5:30pm, Amanda J. Guzmán will deliver a related talk— “Collected Puerto Rico: Re-assembling Object Itineraries in Museum and Art Contexts”— at the Chazen Museum of Art Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public (please RSVP).
The Opening Reception/Exhibition Celebration will take place on September 19, at 5:00pm. The event will begin with a talk by Delano in the Chazen’s auditorium. At 6:00pm, the program will continue with a public reception in the Mead Witter Lobby. This event is free and open to the public (please RSVP).
Description: This exhibition considers contemporary Caribbean reality through the juxtaposition of appropriated photographic images, archival documents and found objects. With irony and wry humor, visual artist and photographer Pablo Delano (b. 1954 San Juan, Puerto Rico) subverts longstanding stereotypes and questions historical narratives while also affirming and celebrating the region’s global impact and resistance. [. . .]
Pablo Delano is a visual artist and photographer with a keen interest in archives and the lives and histories of Latin American and Caribbean communities. Delano was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He attended Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, from which he obtained an MFA in painting. Between 1979 and 1996 he lived in New York City where he carried out several documentary photography projects relating to the city’s Caribbean and LatinX communities.
He has published several photographic monographs, most notably In Trinidad (2008) and Hartford Seen (2020). For the last ten years, Delano has worked in the mediums of conceptual art installation and sculptural assemblage. Pablo Delano’s artworks have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the world, including as part of the 2024 Venice Biennale. Delano serves as the Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and is a co-founder of Trinity’s Center for Caribbean Studies.
For full description, see https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/caribbean-matters-cuestiones-caribenas-assemblage-and-sculpture-by-pablo-delano/
Also see our previous post, https://repeatingislands.com/2025/06/24/pablo-delano-centers-complex-caribbean-histories-in-new-exhibition-at-chazen-museum-of-art/
[Pablo Delano, la fuente, 2022, pigment print on canvas, wood, found object.]