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Indepth Arts News:
"ERNESTO PUJOL: CONVERSION OF MANNERS
CONTEMPORANEA 2000"
2000-06-13 until 2000-09-24
el museo del barrio
New York, NY,
USA
El Museo del Barrio announces the June opening of Conversion of Manners a
site-specific installation by Ernesto Pujol, on view June 13 through September 24, 2000. Commissioned by El
Museo, this site-specific installation is Ernesto Pujol's first solo presentation at El Museo del Barrio, and will be
featured as part of the Contemporanea 2000 series.
Conversion of Manners is a Benedictine vow that Roman Catholic monks take when they leave secular life and
enter monastic life. The vow signals changes in spiritual beliefs as well as in physical manners – behavior and
demeanor. Through a series of photographs and vintage Carthusian, Franciscan and Jesuit habits, Ernesto Pujol
enacts a spiritual performance. He presents fragmented moments of a sacred narrative through the measured
poses, gestures, and movements of body language.
Julia P. Herzberg, Ph.D., curator of the exhibition, wrote: Pujol's art embraces the sacred and the profane as he
draws on his own past, religious history, art historical images, body and performance art, and contemporary
conceptual photographic practices. In these images of monks and priests the artist crisscrosses boundaries
among sculpture, painting, photography and performance and body art, while speaking to and for experimental
moments that have slipped away.
Pujol, who was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in San Juan Puerto Rico, currently lives in New York City. After
graduating from the Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1979 with a degree in painting he spent six years in cloistered
and active religious life. He resumed art making about twelve years ago and since then has exhibited
internationally in the Johannesburg Biennale (South Africa); the Second Saaremaa Biennaal (Estonia); and the
Sixth Havana Biennial (Cuba). Pujol has received several prestigious fellowships and awards including, the Joan
Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Cintas Foundation Visual Arts
Fellowship.
The Contemporanea Series, now in its fourth year, continues to commission groundbreaking site-specific
installations by emerging or under recognized artists whose work extends the boundaries of art making.
This exhibition is generously funded by the Greenwall Foundation and Jerome Foundation.
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