Diógenes Ballester's
Free Registry: Encounter, Mythology and Reality

Exhibition: May 17 – June 19, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 17, 6PM – 8PM
Artist talk: Wednesday, June 18, 6PM

MediaNoche, Uptown's gallery devoted to new media, presents Diógenes Ballester's Free Registry: Encounter, Mythology and Reality, an online preamble to his exhibition of the same title at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

MAY 17 – June 19: MediaNoche
Visitors to the gallery will be able to see a projection of the Slave Registry of the Village of Ponce, a 19th Century text cataloguing African men, women and children as property to be sold on the auction block. The registry lists some of the ancestors of Puerto Ricans (white and black) by name and provides an eery entrance into a world that legitimized the sale of human beings.

As a counterpoint to the Slave Registry, the artist has created the Free Registry, allowing visitors to share in the historical process. According to Ballester, "We experience the slave trade as a specific, local event in our country's history, but it is and has always been a global phenomenon, affecting many people in different parts of the world." Visitors to MediaNoche gallery can browse through the pages of the Slave Registry and comment in the Free Registry, both online at www.diogenes-ballester.com.

June 5 – September 7 : Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico
Free Registry: Encounter, Mythology and Reality, an exhibition that challenges visitors to rethink the official story. Through traditional and new media, Ballester interprets aspects of the African Diaspora in Puerto Rico. Encaustic drawings and paintings, sculptures and multimedia installations engage the visitor in an historical dialectic of personal discovery.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

DIÓGENES BALLESTER is a visual artist working in different media. His work explores oral history, memory, mythology, ritual, and cultural identity along a transnational spectrum. Ballester has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2006, he presented two concurrent exhibitions at the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York City and the Museum of the History of Ponce in Puerto Rico. Cultural objects and historical artifacts from Ponce and Spanish Harlem were appropriated and reframed in the museums and together with painting, drawing and new media provided a way of accessing the past and re-interpreting the present in a transcaribbean dialogue.

Recent awards and honors include: MediaNoche, Artist-in-Residence 2008, New York State Council for the Arts, Individual Artist Grant 2006; Museum of the History of Ponce, Artist-in-Residence 2006; and the Museum Archive of Caribbean University in Puerto Rico, Artist-in-Residence 2007. The Museum of the History of Ponce honored him with a panel discussion on International Day of Museums and a webcast hosted by PRdream.com between Caribbean University and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York City. In 2007, Ballester's exhibition "Ancestral Confession: Historical Evidence of a City" was awarded "Best Exhibition of the Year in Contemporary Media" by the Puerto Rico Chapter of the International Association of Critics of Art (AICA), based in Paris.