SHARING THE SPOTLIGHT
A series of talks by 5 emerging Latinx photographers

Organized in conjunction w. Maximo Rafael Colón BORIMIX 2025 “Storied LENS” exhibition @ LATEA’s Tamayo Gallery with the support of Historias/LXNY.  Co-curated by Miguel & Mercedes Trelles

Program and Invited Artists Schedule

Saturday, Nov. 16

Mercedes Trelles in conversation with Maximo Rafael Colón.

An in-depth interactive conversation between “Storied Lens” co-curator Mercedes Trelles (University of Puerto Rico) and Maximo Rafael Colón.  They will discuss Colón’s photo practice, his trajectory, the selection of photographs in “Storied Lens” and upcoming projects.

Colón is the ideal artist provocateur that has always been in the forefront of social justice and community empowerment.  His photographs span over forty years dedicated to the wellbeing of the Puerto Rican and Latino community.

As part of the Borimix 2024 Storied Lens Exhibition at LATEA, Colón has extended an invitation to a select group of Latino emerging photographers to share the spotlight in a series of artist talks where they will present and discuss their work.

Mercedes Trelles Hernández is a professor of art history at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus, and an independent curator. She has written art criticism and edited several catalogues on the history of art in Puerto Rico. In 2015 she collaborated with Tate Modern, contributing an essay on Argentinean pop for The World Goes Pop. After spending three years as curator of the collection of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, she has organized several independent exhibitions. She directed the Francisco Oller gallery from 2014 to 2018. 

Maximo Rafael Colón was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.  Colón is a New York based photographer who studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Colón’s photography speaks to his concerns of social justice, activism, and cultural expression which encapsulates a wide range of interest in music, the human condition and making visible the people of our society who are often marginalized through discrimination and inequality. His primary medium is analogue photography, Colón also creates assemblages in the found object tradition.  His works have been exhibited in several venues throughout New York City and Puerto Rico and a number of his photographs form part of the Centro De Estudios Puertorriqueños archives at CUNY Hunter College and of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

In 2015, Colón’s photography was prominently featured in ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and The Loisaida Center in Manhattan. Some of his photographs form part of the Centro De Estudios Puertorriqueños archives at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and his work has also been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, Bronx Documentary Center, New York Cultural Center and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. He is currently editing My Upside Down World: Deconstructing Photography, a five year digital project encompassing photographs from New York, Puerto Rico, Berlin, Mainz, Paris, Havana, and Toronto His works can be found in numerous publications, film documentaries and are part of many private collections.

Saturday, Nov. 23

Artist talk: Jon Ferrer

Jon Ferrer is a freelance photographer from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, N.Y. Jon has and will continue to shoot any genre of photography as long as there’s an opportunity to learn, but his first love is for the streets of New York. Jon has been a part of multiple group showings with galleries such as Art on the Ave, The Muse Gallery, and La Sala de Pepe. He is a first-place winner of the 2024 Veterans Creative Arts Competition in multiple categories and had a successful solo photography exhibition this past summer.  Ferrer’s talk will be about a photographic journey through darkness and light. As a poor Hispanic child from a single-parent home who grew to be a combat war veteran, he has faced a good share of trauma. This is his perspective on the connection between art and mental health

Saturday, Dec. 7

Artist talk:  Mario Ruben Carrión

Carrión is an artist and cultural worker from Caguas, Puerto Rico now based in Brooklyn, NY.  As a photographer and filmmaker, he has documented the Latine community of New York City for over a decade, navigating the worlds of music, nightlife and organizing.  He has led teams of visual artists in documenting Afro Latino Festival NYC and the New York Latino Film Festival (NYLFF).  Mario edited the award-winning documentary “We Still Here/Nos Tenemos” in 2021 and has since written and directed his first fiction short film, “Record Shop”, which recently wrapped its film festival run.  He is currently the New Media Manager at the Caribbean Cultural Center & African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) in Harlem, NY.

Saturday, Dec. 14

Artist talk:  Maylyn “Zero” Iglesias

Iglesias is a Nuyorican photographer, educator, archivist and curator born and raised on the Lower East Side. Her early sensibilities were formed in New York City by 1980’s graffiti, hip hop, punk and her mother’s Salsa and Supremes records.  She graduated from LaGuardia Community College with an Associates Degree in Commercial Photography. Iglesias’ work is focused on her beloved Loisaida with the aim of documenting remnants of the quickly disappearing Nuyorican culture that once thrived so boldly in her youth. Her personal project, “What’s It Mean to be Nuyorican” was added to the LaGuardia Wagner Archives in 2021. During that time she joined the Loisaida Center to head their newly-launched archive program, which was created to preserve the history of LES photographers, poets, musicians and neighborhood leaders and activists. Among the photographers whose work Iglesias is digitizing is Marlys Momber’s photographs.  Her own art and photography has been shown in New York, New Orleans and London. Maylyn has co-taught photography workshops and been a teaching and darkroom assistant at ICP, the Free Film Project, Lower East Side Girls Club and the Josephine Herrick Project.

Saturday, Jan. 4

Artist talk:  Destiny Mata

Mata is a Mexican American photographer and filmmaker based in her native New York City focusing on issues of subculture and community. After studying photojournalism at LaGuardia Community College and San Antonio College, she spent two years as Director of Photography Programs at the Lower Eastside Girls Club.   Mata recently has been awarded the Magnum Foundation Fellowship 2023. She exhibited La Vida En Loisaida: Life on the Lower East Side, a solo exhibition at Photoville Festival 2020, ICP Concerned Global Images for Global Crisis at the International Center of Photography 2020, and Mexic-Arte Museum.  She is currently preparing a series of documentary works continuing her exploration of the fabric of the communities around her.  Among the work to be discussed will be, Lower East Side Yearbook, a collaborative multimedia project led by residents of Lower East Side public housing. 

Saturday, Jan 11

TBD

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