Puerto Rican artist Angel Suarez-Rosado: Talisman at the Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania

Allentown, PA – With an official opening day of Sunday, September 9, 2018, the fall exhibitions at the Allentown Art Museum will bring art to the Lehigh Valley that spans centuries and geographies. The Museum’s entire second floor will feature art from the Caribbean and Central America in three must-see exhibitions,Power and Piety: Spanish Colonial Art, Molas: Social Fabric, Angel Suarez-Rosado: Talismán, that will showcase the vitality of the region’s artistic traditions and explore themes of spirituality, cultural exchange, trade, and colonization.

Puerto Rican-born, Easton-based artist Angel Suarez-Rosado will create a site-specific installation at the Allentown Art Museum. Suarez-Rosado transforms ordinary objects, imbuing them with power, in a practice related to Espiritismo (Spiritism) and Santería, which combine elements of Yoruba religion with Catholicism. Conceived of as an offering to the community and comprised of paintings, sculptures, found and natural objects, Talisman mixes ritual and artistic traditions. As stated by fellow artist Raquelín Mendieta, “Spirituality and art are one and the same. Works of art are prayers on the altar of life.”

Angel Suarez, Cosmograns 

Since 1980, Angel's work has been an expression of Santeria traditions through his lens as a gay Puerto Rican. He says, "my own reality is a daily frenetic activity to increase and agglomerate the information in our surge for survival. The studies of the sacred areas bring me into an awareness for healing in the immensity of injustice: an illuminated anxiety for a cosmic shelter, a place to rescue and recover our own fractured and mutilated

Ángel Suárez-Rosado: Talismán

September 9–December 16, 2018

Suarez-Rosado will be in Rodale Gallery on opening day, September  9, from noon till 4 p.m. to talk with visitors about his work.

The Allentown Art Museum is open Wednesday-Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m., on Sundays from noon-4 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month. Admission to the Museum and all exhibitions are free every Sunday thanks to generous support from City Center Allentown, the Gadomski Foundation, and the Sylvia Perkin Perpetual Charitable Trust.