For “In Conversation with…Awilda Sterling-Duprey: (Un)Drawing the Continent Blindfolded,” José Álvarez interviews dancer, choreographer, and visual artist Awilda Sterling-Duprey for C & Latin America [translated by Sara Hanaburgh.]: “A conversation with the Puerto Rican artist about her participation in the Whitney Biennial in New York, where she performs a series of dance drawings.”
Born in San Juan in 1947, Awilda Sterling-Duprey is one of the most important visual artists from Puerto Rico. In this interview, Boricua artist Pepe Álvarez-Colón talks to Sterling-Duprey about her work in abstraction, the three-dimensionality of the body and about …blindfoldedwork on display at the 2022 Whitney Biennial: “Quiet as It’s Kept,” in which the artist closes her eyes to draw lines on dark paper in response to jazz improvisation.
C&America Latina: In addition to your training in experimental performance with a community of dancers and theater artists, you also trained in the visual arts with a group of abstract painters, at a time when abstraction in Puerto Rico was not considered a national art. When did you become interested in abstraction?
Awilda Sterling-Duprey: At the Puerto Rico School of Visual Arts. I was a teenager and had just graduated from the University of Puerto Rico. I didn’t know any other art that wasn’t traditional Puerto Rican and Latin American. At that time… we have always been in a bitter war with the United States, because we are a territory, we are a colony. The conversation about abstraction in Puerto Rico in the 1960s was complicated by what we hadn’t been able to achieve (politically as a country). So I made a transition, but in a rough way, to abstract expressionism… Franz Kline is the first artist who had an influence on me. His black paintings. Black and white. A harsh gesture. There is no doubt about it. Put down the paintbrush and accept the accident and the way in which it recomposes the painterly plane. Also, Kline worked by listening to a great African-American musician, Sonny Rollins, who was rehearsing saxophone solos on the Brooklyn Bridge. The jazz that influenced me the most at the time was live jazz [with no influence from rock]… And it is the practice of performance, which I had already integrated, … of listening and drawing, that led me to…blindfolded. [. . .]
[. . .] C&AL: Improvisation is integral to Afro-Caribbean traditions. How do you approach improvisation from African knowledge?
ASD: Improvisation is a characteristic element of African arts. I have realized that in repetition there is a moment when the pattern changes. This is what happens with jazz; this happens with the sculptures of the saints. The design of the fabric is fueled by this very change in pattern. I learned a lot about this topic from Sylvia del Villard, from the University of Puerto Rico (Afro-Puerto Rican actress, choreographer and activist), who guided me and taught me the value of the whole continent and the ethnic groups that make us up… She told me about the deities and my skills in art, dance and my interest in religion. Of course, it was already integrated into my family, but at that time people did not talk about African values. So we had to “behave so that people would respect us”, so that people could see that we were a different kind of black woman or man. But Sylvia embodied the ethical values of an entire continent and had been with all those Africans at Fisk University in Tennessee, USA. And this has influenced me… This is what drives me to integrate religious concepts through dance, because the story is in the body and in the dance. Each step is a story of divinity that has as many levels as the elements of nature it represents… My wholeness is visible and expressed within all those contexts of improvisation. [. . .]
Read the full interview at https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/editorial/awilda-sterling-duprey-undrawing-the-continent-blindfolded/
[Photos by José López Serra. 1) Top image: Awilda Sterling-Duprey and Pepe Álvarez-Colón, …blindfolded for P.E.P.O.S.A (..con los ojos vendados para P.E.P.O.S.A) (2021), Platform for performance research, by Pepe Álvarez-Colón, at the gallery Hidrante, Santurce, Puerto Rico. 2) Awilda Sterling-Duprey, …blindfolded (…con los ojos vendados) (2022), Whitney Biennial, New York.]
