Arturo Lindsay - Biosketch

Arturo Lindsay is an artist-scholar who conducts ethnographic research on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions in contemporary Latin American cultures. His research findings are manifested in works of art, as well as, scholarly lectures, essays, and articles. A native of Colon, a seaport city on the Caribbean coast of the Republic of Panama, Lindsay migrated with his parents to New York City at age 12 and settled in Brooklyn.

Exhibitions

Lindsay's work is represented in important private and public collections nationwide and abroad. He has exhibited in major solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Panama, Mexico, Germany, Peru, Spain, and Italy. In 1994 Lindsay received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest International Artist Award to establish a studio in Portobelo, a 16th century Spanish colonial village in Panama, in order to research the history and traditions of the Congos. The Congos are descendants of Africans who liberated themselves from bondage through a series of wars fought against the Spanish crown during the colonial period in Panama. The Lila Wallace residency resulted in a major solo exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Panama City that later traveled to the United States and opened at Nexus Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, and Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. The residency has also resulted in a life long commitment to the Congos of Portobelo and providing his students with valuable cross-cultural experiences. In 1996 he co-founded Taller Portobelo, an artist cooperative dedicated to preserving the traditions of the Congos. In 1997, he developed the Spelman College Summer Art Colony to provide college students and emerging artists an opportunity to live and work in the village of Portobelo each summer, and the Spelman College International Artist-in-Residence Program that brings Congo artists to Atlanta annually to produce Congo art workshops. Lindsay's work in Portobelo has completely changed the direction of his life and the way he makes art.

In recent years he has been creating large installations focusing on the Middle Passage of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Congos. He has exhibited with Taller Portobelo in Santuario de los reyes for the Una mirada a Centroamérica exhibition, the visual arts component, of the XVI Edición del Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro in Cádiz, Spain; Altares, in the Arco Chato, Convento de Santo Domingo in Panama City, and Congo Art of Taller Portobelo at the Modern Primitive Gallery in Atlanta.

In addition to showing with Taller Portobelo, Lindsay maintains an active exhibition schedule. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Retorno de las ánimas Africanas, at the Segunda Bienal Iberoaméricana de Lima, Salones de los Artistas Invitados, Lima, Perú, 2000; Panameños en la bienal de Lima, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Panama City, 2000; Percorsi dello SpiritoAnno Duemil, EXMA' Centro Culturale D'Arte e Cultura, Cagliari, Italy, 2000; In Search of Balance: The ArtistScholar, Smithsonian Institution, Arts and Industries Building, South Gallery, 1999; and The Shape of the Spirit at Centro Culturale Man Ray, Cagliari, Italy; 1998.