Jesús "Bubu" Negrón

An exhibition that consists of a three-level installation of readings based on the recovery of Mexican-born poet Esteban Valdés—creator of the first book of concrete poetry in Puerto Rico—entitled Interpretation of the Sonnet of the Stars by Jesús "Bubu" Negrón has just opened at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS).

In this exhibition Bubu Negrón pays homage to an artist that expanded his artistic practice in order to address and defend labor rights. In 1977, Valdés published his book entitled Fuera de Trabajo (Out of Work), an anthology of concrete poetry that includes the most famous of his poems: Soneto de las Estrellas (Sonnet of the Stars). Negrón plays the role of mediator between the institutionalized art context and those processes that have been excluded from the construction of the official history.

Negrón immerses himself into the intellectual and economic tensions generated by the distinction between trade and profession. In this manner, he has collaborated with the members of the Tlamaxcalli artisan workshop to advocate the restoration of the value of traditional economic production and to include it in the contemporary strategies of artistic creation.

Negrón was born in Puerto Rico in 1975. He studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in Puerto Rico. He has participated in Open Tropiko, Grand Tropical Biennial (Puerto Rico, 2011), Whitney Biennial, Day for Night (New York, 2006) and T1 Turin Triennial Three Museums (Italy, 2005). Negrón's work has been part of group exhibitions in venues like the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes and of the Colección Jumex, in Mexico City, and in the Steidelijk Bureau Museum in Amsterdam.