Lionel Cruet’s Uncertain Futures, Certain Beauty
Lionel Cruet, Retóricas de un futuro incierto. View of the gallery space, El Lobi © Lionel Cruet 2021. Photo by Iria Bignami.
The urgency of climate change is undeniably present in all aspects of daily life. It has been present for decades, and artists are continually facing new questions and challenges in the production of their work. Lionel Cruet is a contemporary Caribbean artist grappling with these issues from a poetic and critical standpoint. Inspired by tropical habitats, the artist explores the fragility of flora and fauna and environmental hazards that threaten them. As such, Cruet uses materials that have a minimal impact on the environment and relies on digital media to create compelling and contemplative audiovisual atmospheres.
Rhetorics of an Uncertain Future (Retóricas de un futuro incierto), the artist's first solo show in his native Puerto Rico, opened in October at El Lobi, an alternative art space in Santurce. Curated by Dianne Brás Feliciano, the show prompts us to consider the multiple effects of the Anthropocene, our new geological era in which human intervention has impacted the environment and biodiversity on a global and irreversible scale. Upon walking in the gallery space, it’s clear that we’re neither the characters nor the narrators of this particular story. We are instead voyeuristic intruders among non-human life forms; spectators displaced from an anthropocentric gaze.
The artist presents a transmedia ecosystem of animals depicted through works on paper and animations of wounded sentinels, sea turtles, sea crabs, and two decapitated West Indian whistling ducks made out of papier mâché that stand in the center of the room. The shadows of the two yaguasas are reflected on a large-scale video piece titled Mirage (Espejismo), which features images of a Caribbean shoreline, a petunia flower, and a truncated rising sun. Digital media and sound are a vital element of the artist's approach to the natural world. Two sound pieces, one by Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón and another by Damian Quiñones, create a collaborative soundscape that accompanies the installation, and for a second seem like the only human presence in this habitat. The ethereal effect of Negrón’s music, who composed a poignant soundtrack for the documentary Landfall (2020), completes the dystopian landscape. With the use of digital images and animations, the artist has identified a sustainable multimedia practice. Hanging by a transparent fishing line, Cruet shows us part of his creative process in a sketchbook titled Diaries of an Uncertain Future, where the viewer can browse more studies of mutilated animals and landscapes. Commercial fishing is one of the industries with more environmental impact, often depleting natural habitats and contaminating the ocean.
Lionel Cruet, Trauma (Trauma), 2021, concrete cast on enamel over limestone, 3” x 3” x 1½”, a series of 35 unique pieces. © Lionel Cruet 2021.
Lionel Cruet, Self-protection (Protección personal), 2021, watercolor, 9” x 11”. © Lionel Cruet 2021.
Because A Leak Is Larger Than Its Body (Porque una filtración es más grande que su cuerpo) and Self-Protection (Protección personal) are two watercolors of a wounded heron and a crab. These animals are crucial for coastal life cycles, and the watercolors feature splatters of blood, alluding to violence. This series was conceived by the artist as a dialogue among the animals. A wounded heron communicates with a sea turtle, both watching a sea crab with a missing leg trying to defend itself against aggression. Animal mutilation is also present in Trauma, an installation of thirty-five baby sea turtles made of concrete castings, most of which are missing legs or fins, lying over an island of crushed limestone. This simulated scene is frequent in Puerto Rico, where turtle nests are often threatened by beachgoers and developers alike. This last summer, the island witnessed protests in the town of Rincón, where a residential complex had plans to expand their premises onto the sand after erosion caused by Hurricane María destroyed the pool area. It was met with vehement resistance from diverse communities as the construction would affect the nesting of sea turtles, among other consequences. The rapid development and privatization of the coast has been a critical issue in the last few years, as there is an ever-growing demand for tourism and an influx of high-income individuals moving to the island for tax incentive purposes under Act #20 and Act #22.
Lionel Cruet, Mirage (Espejismo), 2011, video, 3 minutes. © Lionel Cruet 2021.
Although the looming presence of invasive real estate planning may seem all-encompassing, for us islanders, shadow and light functions as the true visual compass of our surroundings. The overwhelming shadows and the use of black in Cruet’s simulated tropics is expressed in a high contrast and saturated palette. At El Lobi, he painted a black mural of lush tropical plants, creating a unified vegetal entity that wraps the room and ends on a large canvas. This image frames the coastal context and the cohabitation of multiple species in a richly diverse use of materials. The initial idea for this installation can be traced back to two other exhibitions from 2021: one at Yi Gallery in Brooklyn, where two animations of a wounded sea turtle on a large screen TV and a headless pelican in a smaller screen were exhibited, and a digital animation project for Play+Inspire Gallery in Los Angeles. Similar elements are also explored in Cruet’s works Rhizophora (2021), an installation created out of papier mâché, and Sin Horizonte (2021) a painting of a vanishing mangrove landscape, both which were part of Habitares (In)visibles at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Quito, Ecuador. In this project the artist also underscores the vulnerability of mangroves (and the species that inhabit them) as essential ecosystems in tropical climates, inviting the spectator to walk into one. The mangroves were sculpted with paper and utilize organic pigments to have the least environmental impact possible.
Lionel Cruet, Retóricas de un futuro incierto. View of the gallery space, El Lobi © Lionel Cruet 2021. Photo by Iria Bignami.
After visiting the show at El Lobi, I laid on the sand at a popular beach in San Juan surrounded by cigarette butts, straws, and paper wrappings, realizing that the reality of coastal pollution is harder to observe than any of the Cruet’s views of the Anthropocene. Systemic and profit-driven interests outpace any isolated attempts to alleviate pollution. It is evident that only deliberate changes in global policy can significantly reduce the environmental harm humans cause on Earth. Nevertheless, local resistance in Puerto Rico has also exemplified the power of collective imagination. Cruet’s work is so much more than a mere exercise of activism or elegiac cynicism, but an invitation for radical contemplation; this is our world and destruction is already here. And isn't it still full of meaning and stubbornly beautiful? Even in this precarious ecological moment, at the beach or an exhibition space, let’s listen to the renovating force of the sea. We have so much to learn.
Rhetorics of an Uncertain Future was on view at El Lobi in Santurce, Puerto Rico from October 6 to November 16, 2021.
Laura Rivera-Ayala holds a BA in Art History from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and earned an MA in Visual Arts Administration at New York University. As an arts professional, she has worked for organizations such as Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and independent curatorial projects. Laura is also a fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Leadership Institute 2021. Her writing has appeared in Visión Doble and The Puerto Review.