As a conceptual artist myself, I instinctively approached Nuyorican and Diasporican Visible Artwork: A Vital Anthology (2025) with an eagerness to discover the visible storytelling inside. I wished to know: What’s represented right here? Is that this anthology largely portray and sculpture, or does it delve into images, group, and efficiency artwork — mediums that usually go underrepresented in conventional anthologies? The reply was rapid and highly effective: This guide doesn’t restrict itself. It expands. It pulses with inventive kinds born of necessity, urgency, collaboration, and activism. Spanning portray, sculpture, images, efficiency, graphic design, and artist books, the amount maps Puerto Rican visible expression alongside music, poetry, and avenue activism. It’s, in some ways, a visible archive of liberation.
Edited by Arlene Dávila and Yasmin Ramirez, this impeccably researched and deeply wanted anthology units the report straight — not solely by spotlighting Puerto Rican artists dwelling in cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Orlando, reminiscent of Rafael Ferrer, Candida Alvarez, Luis “Suave” Gonzalez, Ivelisse Jiménez, and Pepón Osorio, however by documenting their central position in shaping groundbreaking Twentieth-century postmodern and up to date artwork in the USA. Nuyorican artists employed methods that reclaimed a way of urgency and spontaneous motion, using a number of media and interdisciplinary approaches. They dismantled conventional kinds and embraced experimentation, merging efficiency, conceptualism, and political critique. Not solely was the work a response to institutional norms, nevertheless it was additionally a name to reimagine the position of artwork in an more and more fractured world.
E-book cowl of Nuyorican and Diasporican Visible Artwork: A Vital Anthology (2025), edited by Arlene Dávila and Yasmin Ramirez and revealed by Duke College Press (courtesy Duke College Press)
These artists have lengthy operated exterior the normal artwork historic canon, disregarded not for lack of expertise or influence, however as a result of they refuse to adapt to slender definitions of “Latin American Art” or US requirements which might be deeply rooted in racialized exclusion, together with what the editors name the “archival methodologies” of academia, artwork establishments, and libraries that battle to grasp the complexities of diasporic id. The guide doesn’t beg for inclusion into that canon, however fairly indicts it by asking why establishments stay so hooked up to their definitions of latest artwork and why these works should not already foundational to up to date artwork historical past. Its editors and contributors don’t search permission; they assert that the work has all the time been right here to be included. Consequently, the guide reframes artwork historical past itself to account for the multidimensionality of Latinx artwork, from Puerto Rican to Central American and Dominican diasporas — an particularly pressing activity in 2025, in a local weather of guide bannings and the regular erosion of cultural establishments.
A central quote opens the second chapter, drawn from Marta Moreno Vega’s 1993 essay “The Purposeful Underdevelopment of Latino and Other Communities of Color.” She writes: “In the late sixties and seventies our communities duplicated what the cimarrones (runaway enslaved people) did during colonization …. Collectively we defined, articulated and insisted upon our fair share of resources, our right to our own culture and right to self-determination.”
Lee Quiñones, “Spit” (2021), acrylic, spray paint, and ink on marker on panel (picture by Yubo Dong, courtesy Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles)
This quote captures the guide’s essence: a sustained resistance towards erasure. Vega’s phrases remind us that the struggle for visibility can also be a struggle for cultural and political sovereignty. These artists have been by no means merely producing work in a vacuum. They have been creating by way of and towards constructions of abandonment and systemic violence, constructing cultural areas the place none have been afforded. Nuyorican and Diasporican Visible Artwork is a superb primer, specifically, of these different artwork areas that emerged in Loisaida (the Decrease East Aspect) from the Seventies to the Nineties, run by artists, neighbors, performers, activists, and organizers. The activation of those areas emerged, partly, as a response to the unconventional activism of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, fueled by the civil rights and anti-war actions. They embody areas typically began in city-abandoned buildings or in vacant heaps, like CHARAS/El Bohío within the former public college P.S. 64 on Avenue B and East ninth Road, or the New Rican Village on Avenue A. They mixed the vitality and synergy of inventive actions, from movie screenings and avenue performances to exhibitions, whereas concurrently working soup kitchens and gardens and internet hosting housing rights conferences. Cross-exchanges with different artist-led group artwork areas, reminiscent of Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, have been frequent.
These different areas aimed to create room for modern curatorial practices and to offer a group united by id and a shared political imaginative and prescient to assemble round artwork and interact with up to date points on a hyper-local stage. Many didn’t survive the corporate-driven transformations of town, sparked by the neoliberal agendas of federal administrations starting with Reagan. Group organizations confronted rising strain to adapt to hovering actual property prices, undertake formal governing boards, and depend on personal benefactors — modifications that usually failed to handle the pressing wants of the communities they have been meant to serve.
The anthology honors the foundational work of these artists who outlined the Nuyorican motion within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, reminiscent of Fernando Salicrup, Carlos Irizarry, and Raphael Montañez Ortiz, whereas additionally recognizing the evolution and continuation of their efforts by artists within the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s to as we speak, reminiscent of Papo Colo (cofounder of Exit Artwork), Juan Sánchez, Lee Quiñones, Nitza Tufiño, GeoVanna Gonzalez, Shellyne Rodriguez, and Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz. It makes seen a lineage of artmaking tied to resistance, group, and survival the place the private is all the time political.
“Maria Dominguez Carrying Gentrification along Avenue C, New York” (1985), silver gelatin print (picture by Marlis Momber, courtesy Maria Dominguez)
One second stopped me totally. On web page 138, I discovered a picture of a girl carrying a big sculptural reduction that just about conceals her total physique. The scene unfolds on a well-recognized New York Metropolis avenue within the Nineteen Eighties, recognizable by its previous bicycles, parked automobiles, storefront signage, and the standard cacophony of downtown life. The reduction is stark white, about three ft huge, and resembles a bundle of stacked crosses. Its presence — nearly frozen in time, in distinction with the motion of individuals round her — is jarring. Inside the brick-like shapes of the reduction, a face emerges, as if attempting to interrupt by way of. It turns into a haunting reminder of those that as soon as existed in these areas, their reminiscence carried by those that stay. Within the nook, a younger man on his bike seems to be straight on the digicam along with his fist up, conveying the emotional labor of preserving dignity within the face of erasure.
Nevertheless it was the caption of the picture that held me: “Maria Dominguez Carrying Gentrification along Avenue C, New York, 1985. Photo by Marlis Momber.” I paused, moved by the load of historical past on this picture. As a New York Metropolis-born Dominican artist who carried out a chunk referred to as “Revealing NYC: The Disappearance of Other” (2008) on Avenue C in regards to the privatization of Stuy City, I felt a deep connection to the legacy of Dominguez, Momber, and numerous Nuyorican girls artists paving the way in which by way of artwork activism. Their work resonates with me not as historic relics, however as guides and dwelling markers in a metropolis nonetheless unraveling its personal contradictions. On April 2, as I reached out to Dávila and Dominguez to request permission to make use of the picture, I realized that Momber had handed away that very day in New Paltz in Upstate New York. I had by no means heard of her earlier than this guide. I wouldn’t have identified of her passing if not for this task.
That is the ability of documentation. For this reason this anthology issues.
Elsewhere, a standout chapter by Abdiel D. Segarra Ríos argues that abstraction is inherently political, particularly for artists of colour whose conceptual work resists the identity-based caricatures anticipated by mainstream establishments. Edra Soto’s paintings incorporates graphic and ornamental parts — frequent in Puerto Rican city landscapes, reminiscent of iron fences — to craft a particular exploration of her sense of belonging and alienation. Her course of engages a type of abstraction that displays the tensions and contradictions inherent in Puerto Rico’s political situation: the twin id within the US of each migrant and citizen. Soto affords delicate meditations on migration, cultural resilience, and the persistent notion of dwelling. Certainly, throughout the anthology, themes of self-determination, collective organizing, and resistance to marginalization emerge powerfully.
Nitza Tufiño, “Pareja Taína” (1972), acrylic, charcoal, and polyurethane on Masonite (picture courtesy El Museo del Barrio, New York)
One other robust chapter, written by curator Taína Caragol, notes that the Taíno weren’t passive figures of the previous, as typically advised by way of colonial historic views. It facilities Fernando Salicrup’s “Una Vez Más, Colón (Once Again, Columbus)” (1978). Additionally the guide’s cowl picture, the portray depicts fecund inexperienced tropical foliage. Hidden among the many leaves are dozens of watchful eyes, symbolizing the Taíno individuals — the Caribbean’s Indigenous inhabitants — gazing suspiciously outward towards an unseen presence past the body. Salicrup presents them as conscious and resistant, confronting the looming risk of colonization. On the identical time, the viewer is positioned within the position of the conquistador, drawing consideration to the dynamics of energy and the enduring legacy of colonial oppression in up to date society, inviting viewers to rethink who’s seen and who’s watching.
Caragol’s evaluation of Salicrup’s portray demonstrates only one manner the anthology provokes readers to query how historical past is advised by way of the empire’s lens, and the way diasporic communities reclaim house by way of creation and documentation. Al Hoyos-Twomey’s analysis on Dominguez specifically exemplifies this archival care, which includes a deepening of our understanding of her work in relation to the complicated intersections of racialized, bodily, cultural, and political displacements skilled by Black, Indigenous, Asian, and working-class individuals. Hoyos-Twomey examines Dominguez’s contributions in dialogue with cultural theorists, reminiscent of Sarah Schulman and Coco Fusco, highlighting the vital, resistant, and imaginative responses they provide to disavow gentrification and the fetishization of the so-called “Other.” This violence not solely displaces communities but in addition obscures the visibility and influence of artists and collectives. The archival care Hoyos-Twomey makes use of turns into a way of reclaiming historical past, reminiscence, and which means.
Taken as an entire, the guide uplifts artwork as each resistance and blueprint for collective future-making. In the long run, Nuyorican & Diasporican Visible Artwork is not only a guide. It’s a map, a report, and a motion. It reminds us that the work of liberation is collective and ongoing, and that visible artwork has all the time been a robust drive in that battle.
Nuyorican and Diasporican Visible Artwork: A Vital Anthology (2025), edited by Arlene Dávila and Yasmin Ramirez and revealed by Duke College Press, is offered for order on-line and in bookstores.
