The Dia Art Foundation’s has plans to allow artist duo Allora and Calzadilla to use an artwork by the acclaimed minimalist Dan Flavin for an installation – this decision has caused great contoversy as it is being done without the Flavin estate’s consent, reported the New York Times.
The artists, Allora and Calzadilla, represented the US at the Venice Biennale in 2011, and intend to install Flavin’s Puerto Rican Light (to Jeanie Blake) (1965) in a cave in Puerto Rico. The new work will be an installation of this piece by the minimalist. This site-specific intervention using Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), would see Flavin’s piece powered by solar panels located outside the limestone cave’s mouth.
Dia’s installation is planned to open to the public on September 21 of next year. However, Apparently; unnamed Flavin “partisans,” say that they have opposed Allora and Calzadilla’s use of the work without the permission of the artist’s estate; and go on to claim that Flavin would not have approved of the use of his work in the artist duo’s new piece – states the New York Times.
Calzadilla also told the paper on behalf of the artist duo: “The work’s methodology of inversion, dependency, power, and distancing will certainly reverberate with the history of uneven exchanges between the United States and Puerto Rico.”
Dia curator Yasmil Raymond told the Times: “My role at Dia is to bring validity to both the present and the past. There are people who will undoubtedly see this as a provocation from the perspective of post-colonialism. But I think others will see it as a homage to Flavin and to his evocation of this island.” – responding to criticism of the planned installation.