Shipwrecked and Drowning – Adál Maldonado‘s Puerto Ricans Underwater

Abstract

The book Puerto Ricans Underwater, by Adál Maldonado, published late last year with a design by Bold Destrou, brings together a series of photographs which the artist has been taking since 2016, and which have appeared intermittently on social media. In this project, Adál has portrayed a collection of characters—friends as well as strangers—immersed in the bathtub of his Santurce home. Although Adál initially sought to explore both the colonial condition of Puerto Rico and

its difficult socio-economic situation, it is inevitable to link these images with the island‘s current circumstances given the devastation brought by hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017.