The Protection Dolls 1, Unique Pronto Plate print hand painted with water based paint, 23.5 x 17.5 in.
Asserting Presence is an intimate exhibition of Nitza Tufiño’s (b. 1949) prints and paintings of family, friends, and places she has visited. In her work, she addresses the duality of seeing and being seen. To the artist, the former, seeing, is an act of acknowledgment, and the latter, being seen, is an act of asserting agency. With a vast body of work, Tufiño commemorates the people she knows and addresses historical inaccuracies. She also brings attention to the richness of the cosmology of the indigenous people of the Caribbean, the Taínos, whose influence persists. To Tufiño, her subjects are not strangers; what she does, she would say, is not about “me” but “we.”
