In Chelsea, NYC: Pablo Helguera Traded Art for Latin Vinyl at CUE's FONOTECA

On Wednesday, October 21, from 6 to 8 pm, CUE Art Foundation at 137 West 25th Street in Chelsea hosted FONOTECA: Bring Records, Take Art, an evening led by artist Pablo Helguera. The goal was to grow a new public vinyl library devoted to Latin American and Latinx music.

Visitors were invited to donate or lend records in any genre, including salsa, bolero, cumbia, merengue, tango, Latin jazz, spoken word and experimental music. In exchange, Helguera traded limited-edition works and original drawings made specially for the occasion. The gallery also had music and drinks.

FONOTECA was commissioned by The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, a Puerto Rican and Latinx cultural space on the Lower East Side, as part of its multiyear Historias initiative. The finished collection will be permanently housed at The Clemente as a public resource. The idea is to build a record of Latinx New York through music and the listening histories of the people who contribute. The CUE evening was presented in partnership with The Clemente, which offers subsidized studio, exhibition, rehearsal, office and venue space to artists and small arts organizations, and also produces its own programs. FONOTECA is also one of the newly commissioned works in Historias Reveladas, the building-wide exhibition at The Clemente.

Press coverage added some background. Helguera, who comes from a family of musicians, has described records as conversation pieces. He told Urgent Matter the project began when he found a pile of roughly 50 Latin LPs left near the trash on a Brooklyn street, and later approached The Clemente about building a listening library. It follows the model of his Librería Donceles, a traveling Spanish-language bookstore and socially engaged artwork first presented in New York in 2013.

Helguera was born in Mexico City in 1971 and lives and works in New York. His practice spans installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. The event was free and open to all, with RSVP through Eventbrite.