Essays

Charo Oquet leads a colorful Rará-inspired procession, wearing a vibrant costume of multicolored fabric and a feathered headdress while carrying a pink flag. Community members gather around her, joining the festive performance through music, movement, and shared participation.

Learning in Procession: Charo Oquet and the School of Rará

Luis Graham Castillo

Ten brightly colored textile works hung with clothespins on stacked clotheslines that form four rows across two adjacent walls.

A Pedagogy of Hope: Pagán and Pietri in Nitza Tufiño’s Tenderete

Teréz Iacovino

This image shows the installation of “Babalú-Ayé y La Negra del Hospital” (2022) at the Fridman Gallery in New York. In a dark room, there are three large panoramic projections on adjacent walls surrounding a small sculpture composed of cinder blocks decorated with cowrie shells placed in the off-center right side of the gallery. The video, still on the left side, shows a Black woman with a white headpiece with cowrie shells looking directly at the viewer. In the center there is a figure dancing in the middle of colonial architecture structures. The image to the far right shows three figures dressed in ceremonial attires that display Black diasporic culture. One of the figures is sitting on a rocking chair while the other two people stand facing forward.

Bearing Her to the Present:
Yelaine Rodriguez and the Un-Ghosting of Afro-Dominican Identity

María Elena Ortiz

Large hand-painted map of the Gulf of Mexico on amate paper. Rendered in muted earth tones, blues, and greens, the work layers coastlines, rivers, ships, animals, Indigenous and colonial imagery, environmental references, and scenes of resistance across the Gulf region. “Gulf of Mexico” appears in gold at the center. Historical and contemporary events unfold simultaneously, creating a visual narrative of colonialism, migration, ecology, and cultural resilience.

Outlaw Paper: Sandy Rodriguez’s Resistance Map of Gulf of Mexico

Veronica Pesantes Vallejo

A wooden desk staged as a detective’s workstation: a vintage teal typewriter at right, a stand of pale-blue date-labeled file folders at center, and across the surface a yellow legal pad of handwritten notes, newspapers, round sunglasses, business cards printed with a WhatsApp number, and an open folder showing a flyer that reads “Looking for Witnesses! Dominican, do you consider yourself Black or Indio? Did migrating change your perspective?”

The Investigator’s Folder:
Curriculum as Form in Lizania Cruz’s The Investigation of the Dominican Racial Imaginary

Alex Feliciano Mejía

Two hospital beds form part of an art installation. A video monitor showing a patient telling their story rests on each bed. Behind the bed, a whiteboard displays handwritten notes about each patient’s illness.

Pepón Osorio’s Convalescence: Reimagining the Teaching Hospital

Megan Voeller

Nine rectangular handmade bars of soap arranged in two rows on a white display surface in a gallery setting. Each bar is composed of layered colors, primarily deep blues, bright turquoises, reds, and dark browns, giving them a striated, geological appearance. Each bar is embossed with a word pressed into its surface; visible words include “NEGRE,” “AFRO,” and “BLACK.” The bars vary slightly in color combination and show traces of organic material embedded within the glycerin. Their handmade quality is evident in the slight irregularities of their surfaces and the uneven distribution of color and herbs throughout each bar.

Material Memory: Francheska Alcántara’s Pedagogy of the Archive

Denisse Brito

An all-white architectural maquette of a city park stands on a platform in a gallery with white walls and shelves with colorful sculptures visible in the background.

Between Punchline and Praxis: Chris E. Vargas’s Consciousness Razing

Stamatina Gregory

Votive Pedagogy: Activating Historical-Spiritual Worlds in Santa Barraza’s retablos

Sonja Elena Gandert

Ongoing Contestations: Kathy Vargas’s My Alamo

Deanna Ledezma