NEW YORK.- El Museo del Barrio, New York’s premier Latino and Latin American cultural institution, will present Héctor Méndez Caratini. The Eye of Memory: Three Decades, 1974 – 2003 through September 10, 2006 . Organized by the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and curated by Ricardo Viera of the Lehigh University Art Galleries, selections from this traveling exhibition present Méndez Caratini’s 30-year trajectory of photography and videos. Méndez Caratini, born in 1949 in San Juan , is acclaimed for his examination of historical changes and the cultural heritage of the Caribbean. With an anthropological aim, impeccable creative technique, and strong sense of documentary and poetry, Méndez Caratini addresses artisans at work, religious devotion and ritual, social interactions and political struggle within the context of Latin America.

Héctor Méndez Caratini. The Eye of Memory: Three Decades, 1974 – 2003 will present approximately 50 photographs, both black and white and color, as well as seven of the artist’s video works presented as a continuous loop. Illuminating what Viera refers to as “visual magical realism,” the work of Méndez Caratini preserves the folkloric traditions and cultural memory of the people of Puerto Rico, of the Dominican Republic , and of other nations’ communities of Indo-American ancestry. The exhibition is divided into 13 series, ranging from documentary photographs of rock engravings preserved from the Taíno tribes originally inhabiting the Antilles to images that chronicle the peaceful civil disobedience movement in Vieques.

Visually interpreting the Afro-Caribbean religious rituals that celebrate a syncretism of Catholicism with African deities, Méndez Caratini captures the diverse, converging elements that define the hybrid identities of the Americas. Renowned for his color photographs of carnival costumes and masks at folk festivals in the Puerto Rican towns of Hatillo, Ponce and Loíza, he also focuses upon other popular traditions such as the improvised dances of the bomba or the festive occasion of the pig roast. Other series reveal Méndez Caratini’s efforts to preserve the natural environment in his beautiful botanical studies of flora or his renderings of the mystical mountain scenery of Jayuya, the region whose name signifies “land of the dead” in the Taíno language.

Héctor Méndez Caratini holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Puerto Rico. He has studied with Ricardo Alegría at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y del Caribe, in San Juan, and exhibited throughout the Americas and in Europe at institutions including La Casa de América, Madrid; Centre d’Art Georges Pompidou; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana; Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The recipient of several grants from The Puerto Rican Foundation for the Humanities/National Endowment for the Humanities, San Juan, Méndez Caratini is represented in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, New York; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.