Providence-based artist Joel Rosario Tapia curated “Remedy” as part of the 2023 Providence Biennial. “Remedy is a verb,” he says. “An action taking action.”
Known by most simply as Tapia, he gives exposure to artists who are misunderstood or whose works have not hit the mainstream.
Tapia is descended from the Taino people, an Indigenous group from the Caribbean area. The Taino-Ti, he says, means “good be on to you.” He says he is also known as Caciques Tureygua Taino Cay and is the chief of a tribe of pre-colonial families called the Cibuco-Bayamon Taino Tribe.
Here is a conversation with Sullivan, who talks about how the Remedy exhibit came about. The complete interview can be found here.
A need for honest dialogue
Tapia says the three R’s helped him conceive Remedy.
“It comes from remedy, redress and repatriation,” he says., “Remedy is medicine, Remedy is a resolution.
“And today, I feel like a lot of this honest dialogue about who we really are is needed.”
Tapia curated the work of 14 artists in Remedy, which required him to get to know them.
Remedy gave him a chance to get the public to know them, too.
“I have been studying the art of curation, I’ve been in and out of many exhibitions, and I usually see artists that may have a lot of say when you have a conversation with them, but they don’t necessarily have a lot to say to the public because everyone doesn’t always know who they are,” he says. “For Remedy, I thought about the audience.
“I thought about how the flow would feel for someone visiting this space for the first time.”
Remedy was a milestone
Tapia says that his two military deployments to Iraq made him a jack-of-all-trades. He had to improvise when threats loomed.
“I’ve been through all kinds of treatment and support groups and different things like that at the VA for post-traumatic stress,” he says. “But I had to go through all of those steps to be able to have a better way of understanding it.
“You gotta go through the struggle in order to realize the vision and yeah, that’s me.”
Tapia calls Remedy a milestone in his career.
“It allowed me to have a voice and combine that voice synergistically with others,” he says. “I think that this concept in trying to represent artists and let them tell their stories, that’s what I wanted to contribute with Remedy ... allow us to be seen and allow us all to have these conversations.
“I think it’s been very effective here and it can be a model in the world of art.”
