Fort Lauderdale-based artist and performer Anthony Torres isn’t any stranger to exploring deep and sophisticated themes in his life, corresponding to his cultural identification, self-discovery, and psychological well being struggles by theater and poetry.
However, for the primary time, he’s taken on a brand new artistic endeavor that challenged him to dive deeper into these themes in his first solo artwork exhibition, “An Island in the Shape of a Prison” on the Pompano Seashore Cultural Middle, which runs by Saturday, Oct. 19.
Torres, a brand new grant administrator for the Broward County Cultural Division, beforehand utilized for one of many division’s artist grants to create a efficiency artwork piece.
He says he utilized for the Artist Innovation Grant two years in the past for a beachside poetry efficiency offered with an opera singer, a percussionist, and one other poet.
He factors out that this was previous to him beginning his place on the Broward County Cultural Division. He says that the grant was such an “awesome experience,” he determined to use for an additional grant, the Artist Assist Grant, that may fund as much as $5,000 for a challenge.
“I looked at it as an opportunity to fund my first attempt at visual art,” says Torres.
“An Island” showcases paintings utilizing combined media, images, video, and a poem written by Torres, which is damaged up into sections all through the exhibit. Themes are reflections of his serving as a soldier on the Abu Ghraib Jail in Iraq whereas additionally tackling the concept of self-exploration, along with insights into his Puerto Rican heritage that he has explored in different artwork mediums.
“I write a lot of poetry, and I’m in a theater company called the Combat Hippies, which is an ensemble of Puerto Rican military veteran performing artists. So, I feel like I’ve been kind of using those mediums to tell different stories, including my experience in Iraq in 2004, for some time now,” says Torres.
When it got here to creating items for his exhibition, a significant theme he endeavored to discover was his Puerto Rican heritage and the way that’s intrinsically linked to his time serving within the army, he explains.
One of many first items that viewers see when strolling by the gallery house is entitled “Honor et Fidelitas,” which is a mix of combined media and located objects on a portray. The paintings was made by altering a replication of “The Borinqueneers,” painted by artist Dominic D’Andrea in 1992 for the Nationwide Guard Heritage Basis. The unique portray depicts the U.S. sixty fifth Infantry Regiment, who had been an all-Puerto Rican army unit, throughout a bayonet cost towards a Chinese language division throughout the Korean Warfare.
Torres selected to incorporate his interpretation of the piece as a nod to the lengthy historical past of Puerto Rican troopers serving underneath U.S. route, in addition to his personal army background.
“Puerto Rico has an interesting relationship with the United States, living under the U.S. as one of its colonies and fighting in its wars historically. But also, for me personally, my dad was in the Army National Guard in New York in the 80s. So, as a child, he spoke fondly of those few years he served, which had a major influence on me,” says Torres.
At 19, Torres enlisted within the Military and was despatched abroad to Iraq on the top of the battle. Throughout his deployment, he served as a therapist on the Abu Ghraib Jail, offering remedy to each Iraqi detainees in addition to deployed troops, a contradiction which he struggled with each day, he recollects.
“I found myself in Iraq dealing with some inner turmoil and conflict because I was in this difficult position of helping our troops with their mental health while also helping prisoners who we looked at as the ‘enemy.’”
His job, he says, was about practising empathy and speaking to and attending to know the very folks the Military was combating towards.
“That’s why I wanted to experiment with telling the totality of that experience and experiment with doing it visually in this exhibition,” he says.
Unbeknownst to Torres on the time, many army officers and troopers had been on the middle of great abuse, torture, and human rights violations at Abu Ghraib Jail, which Torres addresses in his piece entitled “I Love Me-Ataque De Nervios.”
It’s a collage of Torres’ private results, awards, and mementoes from his time serving in addition to newspaper clippings in regards to the atrocities taking place throughout that point. It serves as a haunting reminder of the stark variations skilled by Torres and others at Abu Ghraib Jail.
It additionally was throughout this time working in what he refers to as a “combat stress officer,” nonetheless, that Torres was not solely tasked with offering remedy to troopers but in addition responding to devastating psychological well being emergencies, together with two tried overdoses and a suicide.
By the point Torres left the army, he says he was affected by psychological misery and was prescribed an “overwhelming” variety of drugs.
It was with these prescription bottles collected by Torres through the years that create the central piece within the exhibition. He glued his quite a few capsule bottles, prescribed to him from 2019 to 2024, to a plywood board within the form of the island of Puerto Rico.
His intention was to symbolize the psychological and emotional affect he skilled whereas deployed to Iraq but in addition the affect of colonization on Puerto Rico since turning into a U.S. colony in 1898, he explains.
“It’s often promoted in the military this sense of ‘we’re going to tear you down to build you back up,’ which is necessary in order to do the work that’s required in the military. But what gets torn down is the sense of self-individuality, and because of this, there’s a deep sense of loss for a part of your identity that never returns,” he reveals.
Right now, Torres is free from drugs and as a substitute hopes to make use of this piece in addition to the others within the exhibition to spark a dialog amongst individuals who come to see it in regards to the stark realities surrounding army service.
“Creating this exhibition was a true test in vulnerability and I believe vulnerability is a strength. As a man and also as a veteran, I was trying to put myself out there in a way that I hope inspires other people,” he says.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “An Island in The Shape of a Prison” by Anthony Torres
WHERE: Pompano Seashore Cultural Middle, 50 Atlantic Blvd., Pompano Seashore
WHEN: 10 a.m. to six p.m., Tuesday by Friday. By Saturday, Oct. 19.
COST: Free
INFORMATION: 954.545.7800 or pompanobeacharts.org
This story was produced by Broward Arts Journalism Alliance (BAJA), an impartial journalism program of the Broward County Cultural Division. Go to ArtsCalendar.com for extra tales in regards to the arts in South Florida.
