Papo Colo (born August 12, 1946) is a Puerto Rican performance artist, painter, writer, and curator. He was born in

San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan (, , ; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it is the 57th-largest city under the juri ...

. He lives and works in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and in El Yunque rainforest in Puerto Rico. Papo Colo is an interdisciplinary artist, whose work ranges from performance, theater and installation art to painting, writing, and graphic design.

Early life and career

At 18 he left natal

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

as a merchant marine. After returning to the island in 1971, he falsified a diploma from the

University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico ( es, Universidad de Puerto Rico, UPR) is the main public university system in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a government-owned corporation with 11 campuses and approximately 58,000 students and 5,3 ...

as his first conceptual art piece. In New York he studied under the tutelage of the poet

Nicanor Parra Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential Chilean poets of the Spanish language in the 20th century, often compared with Pablo Neruda. P ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. His interest in

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

n cultures led him to travel across Mexico for a year. From 1973 through 1980 he lived and worked between

and

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

. During these years he did a series of

performances A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

involving physical endurance with political undertones. He is best known for Superman 51, which consisted of the artist running with 51 blocks tied to his back on the

West Side Highway The Joe DiMaggio Highway, commonly called the West Side Highway and formerly the Miller Highway, is a mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A (NY 9A), running from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern t ...

until exhaustion. His father, Francisco Colon Garcia, was a boxing champion and his exposure to the glorification of the body through boxing was influential to his work.

Exit Art

In 1982 Papo Colo, with Jeanette Ingberman, founded

Exit Art Exit Art was a non-profit cultural center that ran from 1982 to 2012 that exhibited contemporary visual art, installation, video, theater, and performance in New York City, United States. In its last location in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, it was ...

, an internationally known cultural center in New York City. In 1992 he founded the Trickster Theater, an experimental multilingual and multicultural theater company. The company served as an integral part of

's discourse and was held on the lower level of its facilities. In 2005 he wrote and directed ''Mplay'', a theater piece created solely for the web. He has won numerous awards including

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

Best Inaugural Show by an Alternative Art Space for his exhibition ''Exit Biennial: Reconstruction'' Additionally, ''REACTIONS,'' an international response to 9/11 conceived by Papo Colo, was acquired by

The Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

for its permanent collection Jeanette Ingberman died August 24, 2011 from complications of leukemia.

Career as an artist

Besides being the curator and cultural producer of

, Papo Colo has organized over 100 shows in which he was also the exhibition and graphic designer. His work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including The Clocktower (2013), Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco and

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the ...

, New York (both 2009), El Museo del Barrio (2008), National Gallery of Puerto Rico (2007), Grey Art Gallery (2006), Art in General (2006), RISD Museum, Providence (2005), Barnes Foundation (2017), Band the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2001). The retrospective of his early work at MoMA PS1, which was organized by

Klaus Biesenbach Klaus Biesenbach (born 1966)Erica Orden (December 26, 2009)Herr Zeitgeist''New York Magazine''. is a European American curator and the museum director. He is the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, with Berggruen Museum and Scharf-Gerstenberg Co ...

, coincided with ''The Cleaner'', a new work the artist performed in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, and culminated with the performance event Procesión Migración that reflected on the constant Puerto Rican migration to the mainland. The artist is establishing Pangea Art Republic, a new alternative art space in El Yunque Rainforest.

Selected exhibitions

Solo

*2009: '' Jumping the Fences'', Galería de la Raza: San Francisco, CA

Group

*2005: ''Island Nations'' , Rhode Island School of Design Museum: Providence, RI *2006: ''The Downtown Show'', Grey Art Gallery: New York, NY

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Colo, Papo Puerto Rican artists People from San Juan, Puerto Rico Living people 1946 births