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Latin America

Jesús "Bubu" Negrón
Cancha Abierta (Yellow Series)

The series of drawings Cancha Abierta (Yellow Series) derive from a project in which Jesús ‘Bubu’ Negrón worked with the community of El Rosario, located in the region of Beni, Bolivia, approximately 500 meters away from the Mamoré River. Due to a major flood that affected the vicinity–the largest recorded to date–the location had been practically buried under mud. One of the most distressed areas was the basketball court, which was buried underneath three feet of mud. Taking into consideration the site’s context, Negrón organized an “archeological” excavation to dig out half of the court. After working for four days with the help of the community and other invited artists from the ‘Abubuya’ workshop, where the artist was in residence, they were able to remove most of the accumulated sludge. When the project was finished, the community organized the first basketball game, and through that simple act, the court was restored. This series of drawings serve as narrative depictions and records of this project.

Jesús Negrón, also known as "Bubu", is an artist whose work is characterized by site-specific gestures and interventions that make no separation between art and life. His work consists of photography, sculpture, drawing, writing, performance, video, and is often characterized by minimal interventions, the re-contextualization of everyday objects, and a relational approximation to artistic production as a revealing act of historical, social, and economic proportions. His works commonly act as tributes to daily survival in Latin America, revealing the experiences of ordinary people and the world of injustice that surrounds them by presenting it in elite spaces such as art fairs and biennials. Negrón’s practice is a relational approximation to artistic production, a revealing act of historical, social, and economic critique. Negrón lives in the neighborhood of Puerta de Tierra in San Juan, where he is part of grassroots community organizations for the preservation and well-being of the neighborhood, its history, and its people.