Aubiquitous sound in Puerto Rico is  the patient tapping of dominos as a  player awaits his opportunity to play.  Bibiana Suarez's installation is a  visual simulation of the ambiance, atmosphere  of chance, and gamesmanship involved in her  island's national pastime. The domino is a for-  mat that allows her to discourse on the dualistic and multilayered issues of national and  personal history and identity.

Each domino contextualizes issues like race,  gender, family, religion, politics, economics,  stereotyping, tropicalism, etc. The line  between the two sides of a single domino can  be a barrier bulwarking oppositions, or mark ing a transition between variants. The implied  line where two dominos meet, however, is  meant to indicate the conjoining of like numbers, of the comparative juxtaposition of visu ally delineated issues.

Stylistically Suarez has chosen to be as var ied as she has been in choosing her visual sources. Cartoons, photos, souvenirs, images  from Puerto Rican art history, and conceptions from her imagination all give credence  to the pervasiveness of the ideas she addresses and their relevance to all periods of her  national and personal histories. These domi-  nos register imposed American images, gen-  erated Puerto Rican imagery, syncretized real-  ities, and autobiographical experiences.

Although several years in the making, this  installation has always meant to be first  viewed in 1998. It is Suarez's way to observe  the centenary of her nation's transfer from  Spanish to American colonialism. The territorial Spanish American war of 1898 continues  in 1998 to be a cultural war between  "Spanish" and American, or "Anglo". She,  like many born and raised on the island, pursued her university education in the United  States and continued to live on the "Anglo  Mainland". She has become bi-national, bi-  cultural, bi-lingual. Being simultaneously two  things in one persona was a prompt for the appropriateness of using the domino-one  object with two designated zones. Awareness  of dual simultaneity elicits the parallel  conundrums of appropriation, adaptation, and  assimilation. Suarez visually aligns these concerns, whether by contrasting a Puerto Rican  almuerzo with an American fast-food lunch, or showing a Caribbean rumbera with Anglo  bleached blond hair. Paradox is evoked in  ironic images of colonialism like the souvenir  postcards and family photos from Guanica,  the site on Puerto Rico's Caribbean coast  where the invading Americans landed on July  25, 1898.

Shuffling, an integral part of playing domi nos, assures that each game will be different, ruled by chance, and not controlled by a  single player. Suarez intends that her pictorial dominos can be reshuffled and reconfig ured. Cultural identities are not static. They  are constantly being negotiated and in  process. Each installation will be like a different game and the changed relationships  will establish new contextual associations  and interpretations-as in reality, the only  constant is change.

This installation is about raising questions,  not advocating solutions. Suarez provides  icons, symbols, and images to evoke a dialogue about identity and historical interpretation. Her politics are purposefully oblique; it  is not evident if she favors independence,  statehood, commonwealth status, or some  other future political/cultural reality. Through  viewer participation, new layers of meaning  will accrue to the work's contextual armature,  and, hopefully, new or renewed insight (s) will  be gained into what is Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican, as well as into the constituents  of one's personal and national identity.

PROFESSOR ROBERT J. LOESCHER, 1998
Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Chair of
 Art History, Theory and Criticism
School of the Art Institute of Chicago

BIBIANA SUÁREZ

BIBIANA SUÁREZ