Ernesto Pujol

Ernesto Pujol is a New York-based conceptual artist with an interdisciplinary art and curatorial practice. He is greatly influenced by feminist art and theory.

Between 1975 & 1979, Pujol pursued undergraduate work in humanities and painting at the University of Puerto Rico, and Spanish art history at the Universidad Complutence, Madrid. Between 1984 & 1990, Pujol pursued graduate work in education at the Universidad Interamericana, San Juan; followed by art therapy, at Pratt Institute, and media theory, at Hunter College, both in NY.

Starting this fall, Pujol will be a Distinguished Artist Fellow in the new MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Practice Program at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago through winter 2007. Pujol has taught at Cooper Union, NY, La Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, San Juan, and the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Fine Arts Program at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn Campus.

During the 1990s, Pujol became known for site-specific ephemeral installation projects addressing memory and the construction of masculinity. More recently, his work has expressed concern for nature conservation and war. In 1997, Pujol represented the United States in the Second Johannesburg Biennial, South Africa, the Second Saaremaa Biennial, Estonia, and the Sixth Havana Biennial, Cuba. Since 2004, Pujol has participated in the Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC, as part of the Places with a Future project.

Pujol is currently working as a Curatorial Consultant for the land Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico in San Juan. In addition, he is developing new performances and installations through Vita Brevis, the public art program of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, for summer 2007; and the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, for spring 2008.

Pujol has been the recipient of fellowships from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Cintas Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. He has served with the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Academy for Educational Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Feminist art and theory were extremely formative in my early development at the university level, beyond historical European classicism and American Modernism. The work of Judy Chicago, in particular, gave me permission to explore my body. As she laid out the body parts of women through the metaphor of a dinner party, rather than morally hiding them under the veil of traditional virtue, I exposed the vulnerability of men through sculptures, installations, and images of non-heroic and even weak male bodies, prepubescent and adult. To this day, the courage of those early feminists artists remains an inspiration in this extravagantly masculine age of war and false heroes, challenging me, as an openly gay artist, to remain constant in creating non-spectacular, humble, contemplative, and perhaps even prophetic transformative public moments.