|
friends leaving Puerto Plata and moving to the capital city,
Santo Domingo, to develop their art, Ramon Pena decided
he was staying. He would make his mark as an artist from
his hometown Puerto Plata. A maverick and a networker,
Ramon Pena has made it his daily mission to promote the
arts in his city and the Cibao region.
Mirna Guerrero, a former curator of the Centro Cultural
Leon in Santiago, describes Ramon Pena as a great cultural
promoter with 10 years of independent work behind him. She
acknowledges, nevertheless, the difficulties that grassroots
artists face when projecting themselves if they decide to stay
in their towns. Ramon Pena does not consider himself one
of the people who stayed. “I just never left,” he says.
He says he has been invited to exhibit in the Playa Dorada
resort complex, but has not accepted. “They should come
to the town,” he says with his characteristic passionate
vehemence. “Puerto Plata is here,” he says, emphasizing
the importance of cultural integration between the tourist
and the city.
|
|
 |
|
Despite insisting on staying close to his community and
keeping his studio in Puerto Plata, Ramon Pena has continuously sought to project himself nationally and
internationally as an artistic photographer. He had an outstanding participation in the E. Leon Jimenes art
competition in 2002. In keeping with the theme of that year’s contest, “Myths and Realities of the Contemporary
Caribbean,” he prepared his work “Palo con Ella,” a piece revolving round the traditional Santiago carnival
character, known as “steal the chicken.” This work received the greatest number of votes from the public attending
the biennial.
This year his work was also accepted at the Bonao Nickel Biennial, organized by Maestro Candido Bido and
later in the year at the National Arts Biennial at the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo, a goal for all
Dominican artists. He was one of 150 artists pre-selected to participate from the 600 who applied. Among these,
his work, “First Conversation with Maestro Silvano Lora” welcomes visitors arriving at the biennial because it
was positioned alongside the ticket office.
Ramon Pena’s strength is in his creativity, his talent for merging several art forms — literature, sculpture, the
environment with photography in the forefront. He is an exponent of what could be the Dominican version of
a pop artist, by taking elements of mass culture and transforming them into head-turning art.
For the Santo Domingo 2005 Biennial, Pena placed a photograph of old iron on top of 4,420 flattened Coca
Cola tops, each nailed into the base. He explains that his work seeks to be a warning to consumers and
manufacturers that the garbage generated by these products, while apparently harmless, because of its volume
can be very polluting.
“It is making art with a product that people use every day,” he says. “It tries to make people think. There has to
be something that motivates the conscience.”
To carry out the work, he says that the entire town of Puerto Plata became aware because there was a mass
movement to collect discarded Coca Cola bottle-tops in good condition. “I would purchase four tops for RD$1
from the children of Puerto Plata,” he explains. But, halfway through his masterpiece, Coca Cola changed the
caps on their soft drinks, making it more difficult to complete his work. The children then raised the price of the
caps to two for one peso, and he even ended up paying RD$1 for some of them.
He says that since the caps are out of circulation, they are now a collector’s item, which makes his work more
valuable. “The difficult part of the work was to find caps of the same color, except for a very few that are rusty
and were put there for a visual focus effect,” he explains.
|
|
|
