Ernesto Pujol

Enesto Pujol is a New York-based conceptual artist with a multimedia and interdisciplinary art practice. Between 1975 & 1979, he pursued undergraduate work in humanities and visual arts at the University of Puerto Rico, and Spanish art history at the Universidad Complutence, Madrid. Between 1984 & 1990, Pujol pursued graduate work in education at the Universidad Interamericana, San Juan, in art therapy, at Pratt Institute, and in media theory, at Hunter College, NY.  Pujol has taught at Cooper Union, NY, La Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, San Juan, the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. He has lectured at New York University, the School of Visual Arts, NY, Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Jerusalem, and The Maine College of Art, Portland, among many others. Between 2006 and 2007, he served as a Distinguished Fellow in Interdisciplinary Art through the Sculpture Department, Graduate Program, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

During the 1990s, Pujol became known for site-specific ephemeral installation projects addressing individual and collective memory, and, more recently, for pressing ecological issues, war and mourning. In 1997, Pujol represented the United States in the Second Johannesburg Biennial, South Africa, the Second Saaremaa Biennial, Estonia, and the Sixth Havana Biennial, Cuba.  Pujol is currently working as Curatorial Consultant for the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico. In addition, he recently formed a performance group for a 12-hour durational piece at the Grand Army of the Republic Rotunda, in the Chicago Cultural Center, opening their new IN>TIME series. Pujol has been exploring the notion of Visiting Artist and Artist-in-Residence projects as ephemeral schools for training graduate art students. Since 2004, Pujol has also worked as part of an interdisciplinary team led by curator Mary Jane Jacob for the Spoleto Festival/USA, co-designing a memorial garden for Charleston, SC, which will be inaugurated in spring 2008. The artist is very interested in the future of the American body on the land and within architecture, reclaiming public space as an environment for silence and meditation.

Ernesto Pujol has been the recipient of fellowships from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Cintas Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. He has served with the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Academy for Educational Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  See: http://ernestopujol.org/