Topic: Diaspora

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

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

Two red Schwinn bicycles bearing American and Puerto Rican flags are connected by a shared back wheel and face opposing directions. They are positioned in front of a pale blue neon sign reading “Pa-lan-te”.

Riding in Place: Miguel Luciano’s Double Phantom/EntroP.R., (Un)tethered Diasporas, and Anti-Colonialism

Anna Indych-López

Made of Traces: Diasporic (Re)Assemblies in Terrestrial Bodies

Clara Maria Apostolatos

A film still in black and white shows two feet in a pair of low-heeled white shoes against a desert landscape.

With All Her Belongings: The Diasporic Middle Ground in Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera’s Zozobra

Jamie L. Ratliff

Casa-Isla/House-Island: Edra Soto’s Reimagining of Insularity

Elizabeth Mirabal

Arteology as Living History: Diógenes Ballester’s Counternarratives to Coloniality

Carlos Rivera Santana