Famous Puerto Rican writers, poets, artists, actors, directors, comedians, musicians, and political activists debut their new projects at Teatro LATEA, a beloved stage at The Clemente in the Lower East Side of New York City.
The Clemente presents famous Puerto Rican writers, artists, and activists
Tertulia with Giannina Braschi and Miguel Trelles
Musical interludes by Play_Ground.
October 20th 2021 at Teatro LATEA at THE CLEMENTE, Lower East Side, New York City
Click here to view the video of this special event.
Giannina Braschi was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Braschi has published numerous works in Spanish, Spanglish, and English, including El imperio de los sueños (Anthropos, 1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1998) and United States of Banana (AmazonCrossing, 2011).The Library of Congress describes Braschi as “cutting-edge, influential and even revolutionary,” noting that there are “elements of art, culture, philosophy, and politics in all of her literary works.Her honors include awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Danforth Foundation, Ford Foundation, Puerto Rican Institute for Culture, Rutgers University, PEN America, and others.
Tertulia’s host Miguel Trelles Hernández is a Puerto Rican visual artist who lives and works in the Lower East Side. A Puerto Rican painter/printmaker Trelles Hernández creates Chino-latino paintings, Latin Pop silkscreens while drawing “Mesoamerican Fantasies”. He has also been actively engaged in curating exhibitions at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center (The Clemente). Trelles’ yearly Borimix visual arts group show at The Clemente has been taking place yearly since 2006. Since 2017 he has been at the helm of Teatro LATEA, The Clemente’s original theater space. Famous Puerto Rican writers, poets, artists, directors, and political activists call “El Clemente” their hub for the presentation of new cultural projects.
Play_Ground is an eclectic musical unit, founded by versatile New York City based multi instrumentalists, Slovenian born Jan Kus and Puerto Rican born Dan Martínez. Meeting during their formative musical years in New York, the two immediately felt a kinship in terms of the vastness of their musical taste and common interests outside of music. After years of playing together in many numerous musical situations, ranging from Latin Jazz to Pop to Balkan Music, Flamenco and beyond, the two musical luminaries were looking for a musical platform, a vessel, on which they can spontaneously switch between various genres, in a sort of borderless, free flowing conversation, which is in itself a reflection of the eclectic modern world we live in today.
TEATRO LATEA @ The Clemente
Nuyorican and Puerto Rican Poetry and Art
The Clemente is a Puerto Rican and Latinx cultural space rooted in the Lower East Side. We connect and co-create with contemporary artists, cultural workers and small arts organizations by offering subsidized studios, exhibition, rehearsal, office and venue spaces; and produce our own programming in a spirit of responsiveness, heritage conversation and provocative collaboration.
The Clemente was founded in 1993 thanks to the leadership of Puerto Rican poet Ed Vega Yunqué, Uruguayan actor/director Nelson Landrieu, and Dominican actor Mateo Gómez. The organization was named after the Puerto Rican poet Clemente Soto Vélez, who for many years had been an inspiration for the Latino community of the Lower East Side given his literary output, artistic mentorship, and community organizing.
Libertad O. Guerra, Executive Director
********************************
Famous Puerto Rican Cultural Centers
Genter for Puerto Rican Studies
1. El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY)
Founded in 1969 by a coalition of Puerto Rican educators, artists, and activists in East Harlem (El Barrio), El Museo began as a grassroots effort to provide a cultural home for the art and history of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Over the decades, its mission expanded to encompass all Latin American and Caribbean art in the United States, positioning it as one of the country’s premier cultural institutions.
NYC Tourism + Conventions
2. Taller Boricua / The Puerto Rican Workshop (New York, NY)
Established in 1969 by seminal artists including Marcos Dimas and Rafael Tufiño, Taller Boricua emerged alongside the Young Lords and the Nuyorican Movement. As one of the longest-running Puerto Rican artist collectives in the U.S., it operates out of the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center in East Harlem, spearheading printmaking workshops, galleries, and community-centered artistic self-determination.
Taller Boricua
3. Loisaida Inc. Center (New York, NY)
Born from grassroots mobilization in the mid-1970s by Lower East Side activists, Loisaida Inc. anchors the historic multi-ethnic neighborhood from which it takes its name (the phonetic Nuyorican spelling of “Lower East Side”). The center serves as an multi-use hub connecting local artists, performers, and scholars through neighborhood revitalization, training, and multi-media arts programming.
Acacia Network+ 1
4. Teatro LATEA (New York, NY)
The Latino American Theater Experiment and Associates (LATEA) was co-founded in 1982 by Nelson Tamayo, Nelson Landrieu, and Mateo Gómez. Housed inside the historic P.S. 160 building (now the broader Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center), LATEA has spent over four decades serving as a critical developmental launchpad for Nuyorican and Latinx theater arts, performance poetry, and film screenings.
5. The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center (New York, NY)
Commonly known as The Clemente, this Lower East Side cornerstone was founded in 1993 by writer Ed Vega Yunqué and others, taking its name from the legendary Puerto Rican poet and activist Clemente Soto Vélez. The multi-arts institution subleases affordable studio spaces to working artists and houses four theaters and two galleries, fostering collaborative performance and diasporic heritage preservation.
The Clemente
6. The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (Chicago, IL)
Located in Humboldt Park—the heart of the only officially designated Puerto Rican Cultural District in the country (Paseo Boricua)—this institution holds the distinction of being the only museum in the United States exclusively dedicated to Puerto Rican arts, history, and cultural exhibitions. It hosts major retrospectives of island-based and mainland-diaspora visual artists.
Choose Chicago
7. Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center (Chicago, IL)
Established in 1971, SRBCC is the oldest Latino cultural center in Chicago, named in honor of the 19th-century Puerto Rican abolitionist and independence advocate Segundo Ruiz Belvis. The center is a national epicenter for preserving Afro-Puerto Rican musical traditions, offering dedicated, immersive youth and community programs in Bomba and Plenadrumming and dance.