Spanish
Santo Domingo.- The Selection Jury composed of Raúl Morilla, Lillian Carrasco and Hiromi Shiba, in charge of choosing the works for the exhibition of the 31st National Biennial of Visual Arts; and the Awards Jury, composed of Yina Jiménez Suriel, Orlando Isaac and Allison Thompson, in charge of awarding prizes to works within those selected for the exhibition of this major event, agree and are in accordance with the criteria applied in the realization of their respective works within the current edition of the Biennial.
They clarified that the work "What is not uprooted, grows back" — composed of the action and its material witnesses (the palm and the tally) — was not conceived to be installed inside the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM), but around it or in the exterior gardens of the Plaza de la Cultura Juan Pablo Duarte.
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In the documentation presented, the artist explicitly states that it is an open-air intervention and, if awarded, the piece must be planted in the surroundings of the museum or in the gardens of the Juan Pablo Duarte Culture Square. For this, the dossier with which the artist presented his work to the Biennial can be consulted. Regarding the concept of "perishable material", it is worth noting that in museography the term applies to intrinsically unstable, degradable or decomposable elements, such as food, ice, meat or flowers, which are objects that inevitably degrade or decompose. In this sense, the palm, a living organism, does not constitute a "perishable material" in the sense prescribed by the regulation, since the text refers to materials or objects that are likely to decay in a relatively short period. On the contrary, the palm is a living and stable element that, unlike perishable materials, maintains its integrity over time, as is the case with wood or paper. Any challenge process is legitimate and it is the responsibility of the Jury team(s) involved to be part of it. However, it is important to note that the challenge has been presented to the Biennial Organizing Committee constituted by Decree 475-22, which must rule on said challenges. "This is not an attribution of either the Selection Jury or the Awards Jury. Beyond these administrative processes, both Jury teams celebrate that the Biennial and this particular work are fostering a public debate on contemporary life, as well as historical memory, authoritarianism and fascism in the Dominican Republic," stated the Selection Jury and Awards Jury teams of the 31st National Biennial of Visual Arts.
