Adál Maldonado, from “Out of Focus Nuyoricans.”
In these humorless times, when offense is so easily taken, we mourn the passing of Adál, photographer, novelist, and inveterate trickster who, in his conceptual art projects, managed to plant the Puerto Rican flag and put Coconauts on the moon. On behalf of Lost & Found, we send condolences to Adál’s family and friends.
In an interview, Adál once said: “I shift identities at will. But I feel comfortable doing that. I’m a product of many different cultural identities. You know, eventually everyone’s going to be Puerto Rican.”
In light of this concept, his energies around the El Puerto Rican Embassy project feels more present than ever.
As GC alum Rojo Robles put it in his brilliant Lost & Found Project on Adál’s comrade Pedro Pietri, CONDOM POEMS 4 SALE ONE SIZE FITS ALL:
"In 1990, based on the ideas of poet and cultural promoter Eddie Figueroa, ADÁL, along with Pietri, re-established El Puerto Rican Embassy, a still active mobile platform and space of resistance for Puerto Rican artists.The conceptual Embassy encourages cultural self-determination because, historically, Puerto Rico has been denied a self-sufficient and autonomous political identity. One of the main concepts/acts/artifacts of the Embassy is “El Puerto Rican Passport Project.” Through it, a literal Puerto Rican passport with a text by Pietri was created to question the assumed or bestowed US citizenship and to affirm the construction of symbolic, non-territorial and emancipated identities.”
In this spirit, we thank you, Adál, for your generosity in helping us
with the Pietri project, and we look forward to a time when people
begin to remember you…
-Ammiel Alcalay
Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative
Auto-Retrato. As I began to disappear I realized someone was beginning to forget me. -ADÁL, 2014