Hurricane Maria, which smashed into Puerto Rico on September 20 2017, leaving behind death and destruction, also foreshadowed a wave of further catastrophes: earthquakes, political aftershocks, a pandemic and a spasmodically functioning power grid. Even on its own, the storm would have made life on the island pretty bleak. No existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, at New York’s Whitney Museum, is a searing, angry and mournful reflection on the five years since the gods battered the archipelago. The title, taken from a poem by Raquel Salas Rivera, expresses two apparently contradictory thoughts. The first is: “The world after the hurricane no longer exists” — that is, the hurricane wiped everything away. The second is: “There’s no such thing as a post-hurricane world” — because it’s the same as it ever was. At the Whitney, these two opposite conclusions intertwine.
