As a conceptual artist, I approached instinctively Nuyorican and Diasporican Visual Arts: a critical anthology (2025) With an eagerness to explore the visual stories. I wanted to know: what is represented here? Is this anthology mainly painting and sculpture, or is it going to delve into photography, community and performance art – mediums that are often under -represented in traditional anthologies? The answer was immediately and powerful: this book does not limit itself. It expands. It pulses with artistic forms born out of necessity, urgency, cooperation and activism. Painting tension, sculpture, photography, performance, graphic design and artist books, the volume cards Puerto Rican visual expression in addition to music, poetry and street activism. It is a visual archive of liberation in many ways.
Edited by Arlene Dávila and Yasmin Ramirez, This Impeccably Researched and Deeply Needed Anthology Sets The Record Straight – Not Only by Spotlighting Puerto Rican Artists Living in Cities Like New York, and Philerphia, and Philerphia, and Philerphia, and Philerphia, and Philerphia, and Raferphia, and Philerphia, and Raferphia, and Raferpphia, and Raferpphia, and Raferpphia, and Raferpphia, and Raferpphia, and Raferpphia, and Raferoel, and Raferoel, and Raferoel, Philerphagael, Ferelerpphia, and Rafero. Alvarez, Luis “Suave” Gonzalez, Ivelisse Jiménez, and Pepón Osorio, but by documenting their central role in shaping groundbreaking 20th-century postmodern and contemporary art in the United States. Nuyorican artists used strategies that recovered a sense of urgency and spontaneous action, using several media and interdisciplinary approaches. They dismantled traditional forms and embraced experiments, merger of performance, conceptualism and political criticism. Not only was the work a reaction to institutional standards, but it was also a call to re -imagine the role of art in an ever -becoming world.
These artists have long been working outside the traditional art -historical canon, not omitted due to lack of talent or impact, but because they refuse to conform to limited definitions of “Latin -American art” or American standards that are deeply rooted in racial exclusion, including what the editor and bibliothoden “of the Academy, artificial institutions and biblothods” from Diaspora. The book does not begged for admission to that Canon, but states earlier by asking why institutions remain so attached to their definitions of contemporary art and why these works are not already fundamentally for contemporary art history. The editors and contributors are not looking for permission; They claim that the work is always included here. As a result, the book The Art History itself reformulates to take into account the multidimensionality of Latinx art, from Puerto Rican to Central -American and Dominican diasporas -a particularly urgent task in 2025, in one Climate of book burns And the steady erosion of cultural institutions.
A central quote opens the second chapter, drawn from the essay by Marta Moreno Vega from 1993 “the targeted underdevelopment of Latino and other color communities.” She writes: “In the late sixties and seventies our communities duplicated what the Cimarrones (run away as slave people) did during colonization…. Together we have defined, articulated and insisted on our fair share of resources, our right to our own culture and right to self -determination. “
This quote records the essence of the book: a persistent resistance to deletion. Vega’s words remind us that the struggle for visibility is also a fight for cultural and political sovereignty. These artists never simply produced work in a vacuum. They created through and against structures of abandonment and systemic violence, built cultural spaces where nobody was offered. Nuyorican and Diasporican Visual Arts In particular, is an excellent primer of those alternative art spaces that emerged in Loisaida (the Lower East Side) from the 1970s to the 1990s, run by artists, neighbors, artists, activists and organizers. The activation of these spaces arose partly as a reaction to the radical activism of the sixties and seventies, fed by civil rights and anti-war movements. They include spaces that are often started in buildings specified by the city or in empty plots, such as Charas/El Bohío in the former public school PS 64 on Avenue B and East 9th Street, or the new Rican village on Avenue A. They combined the energy and synergy of artistic activities, while simultaneous exhibitions and street prestigations. Cross-uphire with other community art spaces led by the artist, such as Robert Blackburn Printmakmaking workshop, were common.
These alternative spaces were aimed at creating room for innovative curatorial practices and to offer a community that is united by identity and a shared political vision of gathering around art and dealing with contemporary issues at hyper-room level. Many did not survive the business -driven transformations of the city, fueled by the neo -liberal agendas of federal administrations that start with Reagan. Community organizations were confronted with increasing pressure to conform to rising real estate costs, adopting formal ruling boards and trusting on private benefactors – changes that often did not have to meet the urgent needs of the communities they had to serve.
The anthology honors the fundamental work of those artists who defined the Nuyorican movement in the sixties and seventies, such as Fernando Salicrup, Carlos Irizarry, and Raphael Montañez Ortiz, While he also recognizes the evolution and continuation of their efforts by artists in the 1980s and 90s to today, such as Papo Colo (co-founder of Exit Art), Juan Sánchez, Lee Quiñones, Nitza Tufiño, Geovaanna Gonzaleziziziziziziziziziz. It visibly makes a pedigree of art connected to resistance, community and survival where the personal is always political.
One moment stopped me completely. On page 138 I found an image of a woman who wore a large sculptural relief that almost hides her body. The scene unfolds in the 1980s in a well -known street in New York City, recognizable by the old bicycles, parked cars, signposting of the store and the typical cacophony of the center of the center. The relief is grim white, about three feet wide, and looks like a bundle of stacked crosses. Its presence – almost frozen over time, unlike the movement of people around her – is shocking. Within the brick -like forms of the relief, a face comes forward, as if he is trying to break through. It will be a spooky memory of those who once existed in these spaces, borne by those who stay. In the corner, a young man on his bike looks directly at the camera with his fist, so that the emotional work of the preservation of dignity in the light of Wissen transfers.
But it was the caption of the photo that kept me: “Maria Dominguez wears gentrification along Avenue CNew York, 1985. Photo by Marlis Momber. “I was silent, moved by the weight of history in this image.Revealing NYC: the disappearance of others(2008) At Avenue C about the privatization of Stuy Town, I felt a deep bond with the legacy of Dominguez, Momber and countless Nuyorican female artists who free up the road through art activism. Their work does not resonate with me as a historical relic, but I have learned that in a city that is still photo in the photo. I had never heard of her for this book in the state of New York.
This is the power of documentation. This is why this anthology matters.
Elsewhere, a striking chapter of Abdiel D. Segarra Ríos argues that abstraction is inherent in politics, especially for colored artists whose conceptual work can withstand the identity -based cariatures expected by regular institutions. The artwork of Edra Soto contains graphic and decorative elements – usual in Puerto Rican urban landscapes, such as iron fences – to make a distinctive exploration of its sense of connectedness and alienation. Her process involves a form of abstraction that reflects the tensions and contradictions that are inherent in the political state of Puerto Rico: the dual identity in the US of both migrant and citizens. Soto offers subtle meditations about migration, cultural resilience and the persistent idea of home. Indeed, about the anthology, themes of self -determination, collective organization and resistance to marginalization are powerful.
Another strong chapter, written by curator Taína Caragol, notes that the Taíno were not passive figures from the past, as often told by colonial historical perspectives. It centers Fernando Salicrup’s “Una Vez Más, Colón (again, Columbus)” (1978). The cover image of the book, the painting, also shows the green tropical foliage of the book. Hidden between the leaves are dozens of vigilant eyes, which the Taíno people symbolizes – the indigenous residents of the Caribbean – staring outside of an unseen presence outside the frame. Salicrup presents them as a conscious and resistant and confronts the threatening threat of colonization. At the same time, the viewer is placed in the role of the Conquistador, which draws attention to the dynamics of power and the lasting legacy of colonial oppression in contemporary society, those viewers invite to reconsider who is seen and who watches.
Caragol’s analysis of the painting of Salicrup shows only one way in which the anthology provokes readers to wonder how history is told by the lens of the empire, and how diaphorial communities win back space through creation and documentation. The research by Al Hoyos-Twomey on Dominguez is in particular an example of this archive care, which entails a deepening of our understanding of her work in relation to the complex intersections of racialized, physical, cultural and political journeys that are experienced by black, indigenous, Asian and working-class people. Hoyos-Twomey investigates the contributions of Dominguez in dialogue with cultural theorists, such as Sarah Schulman and Coco Fusco, who emphasize the critical, resistant and imaginative reactions that they offer to emphasize gentrification and the fetishization of the so-called ‘other’. This violence not only obscures communities, but also obscures the visibility and impact of artists and collectives. The archive care that Hoyos-Twomey is used a method to reclaim history, memory and meaning.
On the whole, the book Art is lifted if both resistance and blueprint for collective making future. Finally, Nuyorican & Diasporican Visual Arts Is not just a book. It is a card, a record and a movement. It reminds us that the work of liberation is collective and constant, and that visual art has always been a powerful power in that struggle.
Nuyorican and Diasporican Visual Arts: a critical anthology (2025), published by Arlene Dávila and Yasmin Ramirez and published by Duke University Pressis available for online and in bookshops.
