Hartford Re-visions Project I, II and III

Manuel Acevedo, Hartford Re-visions Project I, II and III, 2004, printed 2012, inkjet prints, images: 20 x 40 in. (50.8 x 101.6 cm) sheets: 24 x 45 in. (61.0 x 114.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by William W.W. Parker, the R.P. Whitty Company and the Cooperating Committee on Architecture, 2013.53.1A-C, © 2004, Manuel Acevedo

Artwork Details

Title: Hartford Re-visions Project I, II and III
Artist: Manuel Acevedo
Date: 2004, printed 2012
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: images: 20 x 40 in. (50.8 x 101.6 cm) sheets: 24 x 45 in. (61.0 x 114.3 cm)
Copyright: © 2004, Manuel Acevedo
Credit Line: Museum purchase made possible by William W.W. Parker, the R.P. Whitty Company and the Cooperating Committee on Architecture
Mediums Description: inkjet prints
Classifications: Photography
Photoprint
Subjects: Cityscape — Connecticut — Hartford
Object Number: 2013.53.1A-C
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2013.53.1A-C

Artwork Description

Acevedo combines photography and drawing to proffer an ambivalent account of life in urban America. This triptych captures views of an abandoned lot in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut. To execute these works, the artist drew architecture-like structures on three versions of the same photograph and enlarged them to magnify their scale. Acevedo’s visionary constructions can appear optimistic, as if the lot were finally being repurposed. The structures can also look like high fences that separate this community from a more prosperous downtown seen in the distance.

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, 2013

Acevedo combina la fotografía y el dibujo para ofrecer un relato ambivalente de la vida en el centro urbanos estadounidenses. Este tríptico capta perspectivas de un terreno abandonado en un barrio puertorriqueño de Hartford (Connecticut). Para ejecutar estas obras, el artista dibujó estructuras arquitectónicas sobre tres versiones de la misma fotografía y amplió las copias para aumentar su escala. Las construcciones visionarias de Acevedo dan una impresión de optimismo, como si el terreno vacío finalmente fuese reutilizado. Las estructuras también pueden parecer vallas altas que separan a esta comunidad de un centro urbano más próspero, que se ve a lo lejos.

Por estas calles bravas: Comunidad y lugar en la fotografía urbana, 2017

Acevedo combina la fotografía y el dibujo para ofrecer una interpretación ambivalente de la vida urbana en los Estados Unidos. Este tríptico capta imágenes de un terreno abandonado en un barrio puertorriqueño en Hartford, Connecticut. Para ejecutar estas obras, el artista dibujó estructuras pseudo arquitectónicas en tres versiones de la misma fotografía y las amplió para aumentar su escala. Las construcciones visionarias de Acevedo pueden parecer optimistas como si el terreno por fin cobrara nueva vida. Las estructuras también pueden interpretarse como cercas altas que separan à la comunidad de las zonas más prósperas del centro de la ciudad que se ven à la distancia.

Nuestra América: la presencia latina en el arte estadounidense, 2013

Works by this artist (8 items)

View all artworks

Not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel, Lithograph A

Artist

John Cage

Date1969

color lithograph on paper

Seven Day Diary (Not Knowing), Day Seven

Artist

John Cage

Date1978

color etching with hard ground etching, drypoint, sugar aquatint, photo etching, and found objects

Seven Day Diary (Not Knowing), Day Five

Artist

John Cage

Date1978

hard and soft ground etching, drypoint, sugar aquatint, photo etching, and found objects

Seven Day Diary (Not Knowing), Day Three

Artist

John Cage

Date1978

hard and soft ground etching, drypoint, and sugar aquatint

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Manuel Acevedo reimagines the streets of his hometown of Newark, New Jersey, a city shaped by periods of unrest and urban renewal initiatives that tore down existing housing to erect massive housing projects.

MANUEL ACEVEDO: Hi, I'm Manuel Acevedo at the Smithsonian American Art Museum to talk about my work.

“Altered Sites” started in 1996. El Museo del Barrio was invited to do a collaboration with ICP for the first collaboration between the International Center of Photography and El Museo del Barrio. So basically, they asked me to propose a project. I said, "Hey, why don't we do this?

Why don't we think about what it would be like to create kind of revisions of El Barrio? Let's do a survey of the community. Let the young students photograph it and talk about what they'd like to see."

I introduced them to a drawing technique where we use the photograph as reference. We'd lay a piece of vellum over the photograph itself, so the image became kind of a ghost image. The idea was to create a drawing where you can alter the site without physically altering the photograph. They would use pencil to create these revisions of the community.

Two years later in 1998, I come across this lot. It was just kind of calling me. It was almost like a kind of a spiritual calling—like, "Photograph me, please." There was something about its barren state and something that felt very foreign, and I photographed it. I didn't know exactly how the structure should look. It was very intuitive. As I started to think about this tower, I also wanted it to be something that was kind of in this in-between stage of whether it was being constructed or being taken down, which is what I was experiencing with some of the architecture and some of the ruins in the city.

You'll notice that in most of my drawings, they seem to be very skeletal. I take advantage of the fact that also this kind of represents a state that Newark was in, kind of starting this Renaissance, the Newark Renaissance. What the Newark Renaissance represented to me was the possibility of building something but also never finishing it. I started to see multiple structures in the state of limbo. It was very easy to formally integrate these structures that they became questionable images of whether they were real or not.

The birds for me symbolized another world. I had also lost my father in '97 and when I made this piece, I had also started thinking about ways of communicating through birds to my father. I started to build this mythology around it. Every time I looked at a bird, I saw the possibility of that bird being a messenger as well.

The technique for “Rising” is a little different. “Rising “came out of one particular photograph that seems to be composited, but the tractor and the stolen car and the homes are all part of this image. What I did was superimpose the death mask of Pedro Albizu Campos, who was a revolutionary individual who fought for the independence of Puerto Rico, that I located through an institution in Ponce called El Museo de la Masacre. In the back room, there was a room that was dedicated to Albizu and there was his death mask. Interesting enough, when I spoke to the folks that were running the museum, I said, "I'm working on this project. Is it possible to photograph his death mask?" They invited me to come back the next day, and they took the glass off the showcase, and allowed me to photograph it. I superimposed his face into the landscape thinking about kind of Mount Rushmore, kind of the equivalent. Here's this hero who becomes an integral part of our mountain in this landscape in Aguada, Puerto Rico.

Exhibitions

Media - 2011.12 - SAAM-2011.12_1 - 77591

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art

October 25, 2013–March 2, 2014

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge.

Photograph of children playing in the water from a fire hydrant by Hiram Maristany

Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography

May 11, 2017–August 5, 2017

Smithsonian American Art Museum

America’s urban streets have long inspired documentary photographers. After World War II, populations shifted from the city to the suburbs and newly built highways cut through thriving neighborhoods, leaving isolated pockets within major urban centers.