Growing up in Puerto Rico nurtured my interest in meteorology from a young age: the Caribbean wind, rain, heat, dust, and insects embed the environment with variable textures and hues. Furthermore, these atmospheric elements relay a distinctive pulse in the cultural, economic, social, and political fabric of the region; dynamics that guide my artistic practice.

Frances Gallardo (San Juan, 1984) holds an MFA from Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) and a bachelor’s degree in Drawing and Humanities from the University of Puerto Rico.

Her interdisciplinary practice examines the cultural, geopolitical and historical complexities of the Caribbean meteorological landscape through an eco-poetic lens.

She has exhibited nationally at the Pérez Art Museum (Miami), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Museum of Latin American Art (Los Angeles), Seattle Art Museum (Seattle), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (San Juan), and internationally at the Imperial Ancestral Temple Art Museum (Beijing), KUMU Art Museum (Tallinn), Ponce + Robles (Madrid), and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Panama City). Gallardo has been artist-in-residence at The Center for Book Arts (New York), Latin American Roaming Art (Panama City), Caribbean Linked (Oranjestad), and La Práctica, Beta-Local (San Juan).

Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Small Axe, Art Nexus, La Ventana, Creative Boom, Garage, Aftershocks of Disaster (cover) and The Puerto Rico Review (cover). Gallardo is the recipient of several awards including the Lexus Emerging Artist Grant and the NYSCA Artist in the Community Grant.

In 2019 she completed ‘Line to Line,’ MTA Arts & Design ‘Percent for Art’ public art commission in Mount Vernon, NY. Her work is in the permanent collections of public and private institutions, including the Rollins Museum of Art, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Purdue University, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.