Victor Vazquez

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and educated on the doctoral level at New York University before traveling to India, China and Japan to study art, literature and cultural history, Victor Vazquez has been working as an artist for more than 20 years, creating photographs, three-dimensional objects, videos and installation works in which the human body figures both conceptually and formally. In this generous exhibition catalogue, published to coincide with the artist's 2007 Ponce Art Museum exhibition, Vazquez offers a series of semiotic constructs that navigate identity, ritual, politics and anthropological inquiry. Themes include the duality of language and meaning and the relationships between nature, culture, memory and identity. The works are eloquent in their sense of discovery and surprise--sometimes sensual, sometimes frightening, but always worthy of prolonged examination.