Featured Artists
Nicole Hernandez-Mendez
Nicole Hernandez-Mendez, known as YADA, crafts a narrative deeply embedded in the nuances of perception, identity, and belonging. As a Puerto Rican diasporic artist from the Southwest U.S., her work reflects on the equilibrium between the vastness of our surroundings and the intricate, foundational particles that construct its essence.
The historical narrative of Puerto Rican history resonates with a multitude of voices, each offering diverse individual memories and interpretations of homeland. This isn't a single, overarching story but a harmonious collection of voices, each contributing its own particle-like memory. These accounts, though varied, together convey the depth and breadth of the diasporic identity.
The migrations of her grandmothers from Puerto Rico serve as poignant anchors in Nicole's exploration. These narratives, expansive in their reach, are not just tales of movement but intricate tapestries woven from countless individual moments and memories.
In her roles as an artist, organizer, and educator, Nicole draws inspiration from her time on the U.S. West Coast and her research into Puerto Rican migration patterns to the Pacific regions. This journey emphasizes the intimate connection between individual tales and broader community narratives.
Central to Nicole's work is the affirmation: We belong wherever we are. The diasporic journey often positions us in liminal spaces, a realm that can feel neither here nor there. Yet, Nicole's work resists this notion, proclaiming that we are not merely bound to these liminal dimensions. We find belonging wherever we stand, in every memory we embrace, and every story we recount.
With her deep connections to Southern California and her active role in Puerto Ricans in Action - Los Angeles, Nicole Hernandez-Mendez presents art that serves as a testament to the expansive nature of belonging – a reminder that our identities are fluid, evolving with every place we inhabit, be it here, there, or anywhere.
Christina Delgado
Christina Delgado is a Baltimore based photographer, designer, and curator. Her work revolves around a sense of self and identity as a Nuyorican born and raised in New York City who migrated to Baltimore as a young adult. Delgado’s work displays a passion and pride for identity in family and homeplace. It connects ways in which home, place, and family can be sights of pain & trauma but ultimately sights of healing, freedom, and self-love. She is the founder and owner of Tola’s Room, an immersive Puerto Rican home museum and culture space located in Northeast Baltimore. Tola’s Room named after her daughter, Omotola serves, as the only Puerto Rican culture hub in Baltimore City. She is currently on the Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Resident Roster and also sits on various city and art related advisory groups, committees, and boards.
Shawnick Rodriguez
Hi my HeARTs! I’m Shawnick and I’m honored to be the creator behind the art you adore and represents your culture and story. Art has been healing yet a learning journey for me that started at a place during dark times yet have evolved to joy.
After so many years of feeling lost, I finally found my identity by going back to my roots. My art is inspired by my Latin culture. It provides myself and others with imaginative links to parts of ourselves which might otherwise be inaccessible. I want my art to release emotions that make people feel good and take them back to either a time, place or an event.
I’m proud of my heritage which is reflective in my artwork. I enjoy working with bold and bright colors the screams pride. Every single piece I create is made to stand out and tell a story to encourage, uplift, educate and build confidence in the Latin Community. Whether it’s my paintings, my murals or jewelry, I love challenging myself creatively to think outside the box.
The reason why I do Art by SIR is to aspire by sharing my story in hopes my path will open others up to embrace their ethnicity and who they truly are.
Yasmín Hernández
Brooklyn-born and raised, Borikén-based, Yasmín Hernández is an artist, writer, and activist focusing on rematriation and liberation. Long navigating notions of motherland/ otherland, she draws aesthetic inspiration from the abyss that spreads between her birthplace and homeland. Researching in Vieques for her 2009 art exhibit honoring activists who ended US Navy maneuvers introduced her to bioluminescence, transformed her vision and aesthetics, and inspired her 2014 move to her ancestral womb.
Arriving to the colonial debt crisis, in 2017 she was invited to exhibit in the “Puerto Rico Bundle” of Occupy Museums’ Debt Fair installation at The Whitney Biennial, and to present on a solidarity panel in Detroit reflecting on oversight boards. Months later she and her family endured twin hurricanes Irma and María and their aftermath. Images of her East Harlem mural Soldaderas, honoring Julia de Burgos and Frida Kahlo, circulated with various Puerto Rico/ Mexico hurricane/ earthquake relief efforts. Hyperallergic published her account as “An Artist’s Powerful Letter in Post Hurricane Puerto Rico." Spending four months without electricity, the fireflies of those dark nights reignited her interest in bioluminescence. Her essay “Liberation Lessons in Light” is published in the anthology Voices from Puerto Rico: Post-Hurricane María (Edited by Iris Morales, Red Sugarcane Press, 2019.
Channeling cucubanos and fireflies, months after María she launched CucubaNación, a painting series lifting light through the darkness of power outages, climate change and colonialism. In 2022, she expanded the project into a storefront community art space dedicated to the liberatory lessons of Boricua bioluminescence. Located in the urban center of Mayagüez, the space is also host to Rematriating Borikén, her interdisciplinary project chronicling the conceptual and physical journey home, and the rematriation practices emerging from the archipelago of Puerto Rico. The project includes a portrait series featuring folks on the rematriation journey in the aesthetics of Puerto Rico Trench bioluminescence. She recently received a National Association for Latino Arts & Cultures Fund for the Arts Grant for the project. Her Rematriating Borikén Manifesto, expanding on these abyss-aesthetics, is part of a greater rematriation memoir manifesto in-process, chronicling her own journey home. El Charco, a chapter of this work, will be published in the forthcoming anthology Daughters of Latin America, edited by Sandra Guzman (Amistad).
Yasmin holds a BFA in Painting from Cornell University. She has served as artist educator with Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia, El Museo del Barrio, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Committed to art as a healing, liberatory practice, Yasmin has exhibited and offered talks and workshops in art/ community spaces and on campuses across the US and Puerto Rico. She continues this work from her Mayaguez art space, also sharing her art at YasminHernandezArt.com and her journey at RematriatingBoriken.com.
Alejandra Baïz
Soy artista autodidacta, natural del barrio Carrizal, de Aguada, Puerto Rico. Mi madre siempre fue mi inspiración y mi primera maestra. Con ella aprendí a coser, tejer y bordar desde niña. Siempre me sentí atraída e inspirada por el tema de nuestros ancestros, especialmente los Taínos. Desde niña comienzo a participar de certámenes de dibujo y a mis 19 años comienzo a exponer mis pinturas. Tuve la oportunidad de vivir y exponer en países como Francia y Perú. Algunas de mis obras se encuentran en colecciones privadas dentro y fuera de nuestro país.