This event is part of a series – see below for details.March 6, 2026 10:00 a.m.
TIERRA FUTURA: Boricua Land Futures, a solo exhibition by Shey Rivera Ríos and a group exhibition of 22 Boricua artists
Event Details
TIERRA FUTURA: Boricua Land Futures includes a solo exhibition by Shey Rivera Ríos and a group exhibition of 22 Boricua (Puerto Rican) artists from Puerto Rico and its U.S. diasporas.
On view in the gallery at the WaterFire Arts Center
475 Valley Street, Providence, RI 02908
Curated by Shey Rivera Ríos and co-curated by Ruchika Nambiar + Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez
Exhibition on View: Thursday, March 5 – Sunday, March 29, 2026
Artist Reception: Thursday, March 5, 6:00–9:00 p.m. (with a 5:00-6:00 p.m. ‘pre-opening’ Artist Talk with Visiting Artists)
Gallery Night Providence: Thursday, March 19, part of a citywide arts activation with trolley rides and self-guided tours
TIERRA FUTURA brings together Boricua (Puerto Rican) artists from the archipelago of Borikén (Puerto Rico) and its diasporas across the U.S. whose practices imagine, remember, and materialize Boricua futurity rooted in ancestral knowledge and cultural sovereignty. These works contain stories of land-based memory, Boricua rural identity, eco-feminisms, relationship between body and land, queer Boricua joy, cultural rituals, and tributes to significant artistic, political, and familial ancestors. Many of the artists are also founders and leaders of alternative art spaces, land sovereignty projects, and other cultural initiatives that restore and nourish culture and connection to ancestral practices. TIERRA FUTURA is cultural ritual that becomes art practice, and invites us to contemplate what it means to build abundant diasporic futures.
“This exhibition is very special. It is a sample of artists across Borikén (Puerto Rico) and the U.S. who create works that depict culturally-rooted Boricua life and futures beyond assimilation. The artworks are vessels that hold both new and ancestral knowledge of connection to self, land, and lineage. We invite our communities across New England to experience this exhibition, unlock the stories and wisdoms held within these artworks, and join us in our celebration of cultural power, self-determination, and fierce beauty.” says Shey Rivera Ríos, curator of the show and exhibiting artist.
The 22 Boricua artists are: Shey Rivera Ríos, Adaira Rojas Santana and Edalys González Clemente, Angélica Rivera Reyes, Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, Brenda Torres-Figueroa, Candida González, Colectivo Moriviví, Damaris Cruz, Elisa Dore, Grechel Rosado, Jo Cosme, Lares Feliciano, Leenda Bonilla, Lilliam Nieves, Linda Fernández, Lydia Pérez Nieves, Mariana Ramos Ortiz, Michelle Falcón Fontanez, Rosa Colón, Santi Pérez García, Yolanda Velázquez-Vélez, and Vero Rivera.
Curated by Shey Rivera Ríos, Studio Loba. Co-Curatorial and Logistics Team: Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez and Ruchika Nambiar. Supported by: Interlace Grant Fund, a regranting partner of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, RISD SPUR Fund, WaterFire Arts Center, iolabs, Providence Picture Frame Company, and the Puerto Rican Instutite for Arts and Advocacy.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.; Thursday until 9:00 p.m.
Admission is free and open to all; donations are encouraged.
EVENTS / RELATED PROGRAMMING
Artist Opening Reception
Thursday, March 5, 2026 | 5:00–9:00 p.m. (with a 5:00-6:00 p.m. ‘pre-opening’ Artist Talk with Visiting Artists)
Join us for a special artist reception celebrating TIERRA FUTURA. This informal gathering offers an opportunity to experience the exhibition, connect with fellow supporters, and learn more about the works on view.
Gallery Night Providence
Thursday, March 19, 2026 | 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Jump on a trolley from the WaterFire Arts Center, explore multiple local partner galleries and then return back to the WFAC to check out TIERRA FUTURA. Check back for more information about how to secure your spot on the trolley.
PechaKucha Night
Wednesday, March 25, 2026 | 7:20–10:00 p.m.
Laugh, learn, and get inspired by a mix of people from Providence as they share their ideas, stories, and creations using the PechaKucha format of 20 images that last 20 seconds each. Named best event in Rhode Island by RI Monthly! During this month’s gathering, Shey Rivera Ríos will be presenting in the PechaKucha format. Learn More>>
Workshop & Cafecito
Sunday, March 29, 2026 | 11:00–1:00 p.m.
Join us for a special presentation and workshop to learn about Boricua Land Futures, the role of artists in narratives of resistance, and the power of annotated storytelling.
Performance & Closing Reception
Sunday, March 29, 2026 | 3:00–5:00 p.m.
The final gathering of this incredible show, with a performance and cultural ritual to honor the role of artists and communities into the future we must build together.
FEATURED ARTISTS:
Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez
Anabel Vázquez Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in Providence, RI. Their artistic production includes photography, painting, film/video, installation and performance art. They are interested in otherness, anarcha-feminism, galactical dimensions and obliterating colonial systems. They studied photography at the Liga de Arte de San Juan, with Frieda Medín (1993 -1995) and continued their studies in photography, sculpture, and punk rock, as a Fine Arts Painting major at the Department of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico (1995-1998). They pursued a Photography BFA at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston (2002), where they expanded their practice into filmmaking and installation. As a curator and cultural manager, their approach is intersectional and collaborative, with their most recent tenure at Leica Gallery Boston (2016-2020). They have been a guest curator, panelist, and lecturer for various institutions such as Massachusetts College of Art, the RISD Museum, the Bell Gallery at Brown University, University of California Berkeley, and Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño, San Juan PR. As an educator, they’ve been a critic at the RISD Photography Department (2020- 2021, 2024) and is currently an adjunct professor of photography at the Roger Williams University RI. They additionally are an arts administrator for AgitArte MA/PR, a trainer/coach at Assets for Artists and co-chair of the board of directors of the Dirt Palace Public Projects RI.
anabelvazquez.com | @anabel.vazquez.rodriguez
Grechel Rosado
Grechel Rosado a printmaker and illustrator born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and based in the Providence, RI. Grechel is deeply inspired by the roots of her culture and her lived experiences. Although she mainly focuses in the mediums of printmaking, Grechel is constantly expanding upon her disciplines and researching ways to blur the boundaries between them. Grechel is an Artist Educator teaching Printmaking, Illustration, and Drawing across various arts spaces and institutions. She is recipient of the Interlace Project Grant 2024, by the Dirt Palace Public Projects and Andy Warhol Foundation. She is a member of Binch Press and Queer.Archive.Work, a cooperative printmaking studio and archive in Providence. Grechel is a first generation college graduate, with a BFA in Illustration with a Printmaking minor from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
yosoygrechel.com | @yosoygrechel
Jo Cosme
Jo Cosme is a Native Boricua multimedia artist from Borikén, Puerto Rico, who faced displacement to Seattle following Hurricane María’s landfall. She was deeply struck by North Americans’ lack of awareness regarding their nation’s exploitative and ongoing colonial relationship with her homeland archipelago. Through digital media and installations, Cosme contrasts the romanticized idea of Borikén, PR, as a Caribbean paradise with the stark reality of a People enduring colonial subjugation for over 5 centuries. Holding a BFA in photography from PR’s School of Fine Arts, Cosme’s work has graced venues globally, including Museo de las Américas (PR), Whatcom Museum (WA), Alexandria Museum of Art (LA), and Galerie Rivoli 59 (Paris). By 2021 she earned the Puerto Rican Fellowship for MASS MoCA’s A4A Residency. The following year, she received grants from the Collective Power Fund and Artist Trust. In 2023, she received the Bernie Funk Artist Scholarship, CityArtist grant, McMillen Foundation Fellowship, and 4Culture’s Arc Fellowship. Cosme kicked off 2024 at Inscape Arts and Cultural Center’s arts residency, leading to the inauguration of her first solo show, Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre! at Seattle’s 4Culture Gallery.
Cándida González
Cándida González (they/them) is queer, trans, non-binary mixed Puerto Rican from South Minneapolis. González is an artist, teacher, organizer, brujx and badass single parent. They studied Latin American Art and History at The Evergreen State College and went on to get their M.Ed. at The University of Minnesota in 2003. In their 15 years of arts education work in Minneapolis they built K-12 art programs that focused on equitable arts opportunities, inclusivity of underserved populations and deeper, more accessible, culturally relevant arts experiences for youth and BIPOC communities. Through their work they have also focused on providing opportunities and development for emerging artists of color. They are deeply invested in the concept of using art and community design as tools to wage love and healing. Currently González facilitates nationwide the Making it Public workshop series for Forecast Public Art for new and emerging public artists, participates in select local arts and healing initiatives and creates mixed-media jewelry/talismans under the name Las Ranas Jewelry.
candidagonzalez.com | @candida612
Lares Feliciano
Lares Feliciano is an artist, cultural worker, tarot reader, and witch based in the sacred San Luis Valley, Colorado. Feliciano uses animation, installation, and collage to create worlds where diverse stories are front and center and all of time exists at once. Her work explores the in-between, layers of diaspora, and the complexity of memory. She holds an M.F.A in Cinema Production from San Francisco State University and a B.A. in Film & American Studies from Smith College. She has completed residencies with RedLine Contemporary Art Center and Grand Canyon National Park. Currently she is a Frontier Fellow with Epicenter in Green River, Utah. Feliciano’s films have screened all over the world including San Francisco, Berlin, London, and Melbourne. Her visual art has exhibited at Denver Art Museum, Clyfford Still Museum (Denver), RedLine Contemporary Art Center (Denver), The Storeroom (Denver), Breck Create (Breckenridge) and Pochron Studios (Brooklyn). Lares Feliciano lives and works in Alamosa, CO.
laresfeliciano.com | @lareslovesyou
Yolanda Velázquez
Yolanda Velázquez is a printmaker and co-founder of the Jornadas del Grabado Puertorriqueño, a non for profit organization dedicated to the promotion of printmaking arts in Puerto Rico. For 11 years she worked at a fine arts school as a printmaking, design, art history and art appreciation teacher. In 2019 Velázquez founded Taller La Ciénaga, a community based incubator for design and printmaking. Velázquez currently collaborates and teaches at the Center for Printmaking and Book Arts of Puerto Rico and creates at her workshop La Sirene Bwá/Sirena de Palo in Santurce, Puerto Rico. The artist obtained a BA in drawing and painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1987-1992) and developed as a printmaker at the workshops of historic Academia San Carlos in Mexico City and Atelier Contrepoint in Paris. Her work has been featured in several biennials and triennials around the world such as the Polygraphic Triennial of San Juan, Latin America and the Caribbean (2015), the Prague Triennial (2014) and Joven Estampa in Havana Cuba (2003). Her artworks are also part of private and public collections such as the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Puerto Rico Museum of Art, History and Anthropology, Museum of the University of Alicante and Casa de las Américas in Havana, Cuba and Stanford University Special Books Collection.
yolapr.wixsite.com | @tallersirenadepalopr
Damaris Cruz
Damaris Cruz is a visual artist with a BFA in Photography from University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus. Her work explores themes of memory, obsolescence, and remembrance, using images of everyday activities reinterpreted through the sentimentality of tropical kitsch, beliefs, and traditions inherent in the female experience. In 2011, she presented her first solo show, “Humareda,” referencing the large cloud of smoke caused by the CAPECO refinery explosion in 2009. In 2013, her solo show “La Doña,” featured a character developed through her urban poster project, which established her reputation in local street art. Cruz recently exhibited her third solo show “Espacio y Tiempo,” a photographic collection translated into painting with themes of everyday life and the underlying structure of a house. Cruz has participated in celebrated group exhibitions such as “Vial” at the MAPR (2013), “Marvelous” at Galería Candela (2013), “Parasol” at La Respuesta (2014), and “La ley de la trampa” at Galería Yemayá (2014), among others. Cruz has also created murals for internationally recognized festivals in Puerto Rico (Santurce es Ley, Culebra es Ley, Feria de Cultura Urbana, La Campechada, Ponce Renace, Yaucromatic, etc ), La Casita/La Kay in New York, Beyond Walls in Massachusetts, Extramuros in Ecuador, and others. Cruz continues to work on mural projects and/or muralism workshops for young people.
Adaira Rojas Santana
Adaira Rojas Santana (she/her) (Hormiguero, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican photographer and visual artist. Her primary focus is experimental photography, employing mediums such as self-portraiture, photomontage, surrealism, and nudes. Her artistic work reflects the vulnerability and beauty of the human body in different spaces, with special focus on rural Boricua identity and queer land futures. Rojas is also co-founder of the community garden Huerta Libre, deeply motivated by land access and food sovereignty. Rojas has exhibited her photographic work in various renowned art spaces in Puerto Rico and Madrid. In 2018, she exhibited her solo show “Versátilis” at Galería Betances in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Participation in group exhibits include: “The ChelleBlas Art Exhibition” (2022) at Aqua Marina Beach Club in Rincón, Puerto Rico; “FECA: Street Art Fair” (2021) at Bemba PR in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico; “Art Fair: Glitch Hitch” (2019) at Espacio Cómplices in Madrid, Spain; and “Feromonas” (2017) at Cielo in Santurce, Puerto Rico.
@adaira_enla_calle | @__brujx__ | @adairarojasarte | @huertalibrepr
Michelle Falcón Fontánez
Michelle Falcón Fontánez is a photographer and filmmaker focusing on women’s rights, Puerto Rican activism, and cultural preservation. Falcón has presented several photographic solo shows including: “raíces” at Gallery 1832, Cambridge, MA, 2025; “MATRIA” at Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, MA, 2025; and “A Call to Our Ancestors” in Brookline, MA, 2023. Falcón produces documentary films and contributes as cinematographer to film projects that elevate community histories. Her latest short film, María, focuses on reproductive justice in Puerto Rico and premiered at Boston International Film Festival 2025. She is currently working on a film mini-series about the social and environmental impacts of the 1970s fires in South Holyoke. In 2022, Falcón was selected for a MASS MoCA Studio Residency, and over the years has received various grant awards, including: NEFA Public Art for Spatial Justice, LEF Moving Image Fund, ValleyCreates, El Corazón/The Heart of Holyoke, Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture & City of Boston, Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, Art Workspace Easthampton (AWE) Studio Residency Program, The Sander Thoenes Research Award, and more. Michelle holds a MFA in Film and Media Art from Emerson College and a Bachelor’s Degree from Hampshire College with concentrations in Business Management and Film.
falconfontanezfoto.com | @falconfontanezfoto
Santi Pérez García
Santi Pérez García is a printmaker and installation artist whose work focuses on syncretic amalgams of plants and humans that celebrate gender variance present in the natural world. They received their MFA in Studio art from the University of Connecticut, a BFA in Studio Art from Rhode Island College and a BA in Biology from Brown University. Their practice has been sustained through residencies and grants including Oak Spring Garden Foundation, The Peter Bullough Foundation, The Rhode Island Foundation, Millay Arts, Wood/Raith Gender Identity Living Trust, Marks Family Endowment in the Arts and the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Printmaking. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Perez lives and works in Newport, Rhode Island.
Lilliam Nieves
Lilliam Nieves is an interdisciplinary artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nieves has received numerous international residencies and recognitions for her mixed media, installation, and performance art. This includes 2024 Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist-in-Residence and 2018 The Studios at MASS MoCA Artists Residency. Nieves uses a variety of materials to manifest her investigation of the connections between women’s bodies and capitalism. Her work centers body justice and questions stereotypes of beauty and femininity by creating and documenting beauty rituals of excessive and incomprehensible nature. Nieves has a vast trajectory of gestating arts initiatives that strengthen the contemporary arts ecosystem in Puerto Rico. In 2022, she co-founded Taller La Capilla in Bayamón, Puerto Rico; s studio with her life partner and artist Daniel Arnaldo Román. Nieves was co-founder of Resistance Is Power Studios, alongside a group of other prolific artists in Santurce, Puerto Rico. From 2007 to 2012, Nieves also co-founded Trance Líquido alongside Román, a contemporary arts platform in Puerto Rico for arts journalism and cultural critique. Trance Líquido was part of an independent arts movement in Puerto Rico that democratized documentation and discourse of contemporary Latine art. Nieves has a Master of Fine Arts in New Media from Donau-Universität Krems in association with Transart Institute (Austria / Berlin / New York). And a Bachelor of Fine Arts from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, with a concentration in Art Education.
lilliamnieves.net | @lilliamnieves_artist
Mariana Ramos Ortiz
Mariana Ramos Ortiz (b. 1997, Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers the transience of landscapes in Puerto Rico, shaped by colonial histories and the aftermath of climate disasters. Centering sand as a repository of collective memory, Ramos Ortiz employs semi-permanent printmaking and sculptural techniques to reimagine the terrain through an act of resistance against erasure. They received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Ramos Ortiz has attended residencies at MASS MoCA, Kala Art Institute, Wassaic Project, Brown University, el depósito, among others. They currently live and work between New York and Puerto Rico.
marianaramosortiz.com | @la.habichuela
Elisa Dore
Elisa Dore is a visual artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Her practice, rooted in printmaking, functions as a record of personal and ancestral histories and how place informs constructions of identity. In an attempt to physically manifest amorphous concepts of identity, culture, or memories, an image carved into wood or etched into stone offers a tangible answer. Her practice addresses interstitial ways of being that are often untranslatable to words. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, the Hall of Awa Japanese Handmade Paper, and Pública (San Juan, Puerto Rico). She is a recipient of the Ernest G. Welch Fellowship and is currently an MFA candidate in printmaking at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Colectivo Moriviví
Colectivo Moriviví is a women-driven artistic collective founded in 2013 in Puerto Rico, dedicated to muralism, community-based art, and artivism. Formed by graduates of the Escuela Especializada Central de Artes Visuales in Santurce, the collective uses public space as a site of visibility, resistance, and collective memory. Their practice focuses on using muralism as activism to build what they call a ‘collective imaginary’ that reclaims history, challenges erasure, and fosters intergenerational dialogue. They create collaborative murals with their members, community murals, and are active in resistance movements in Puerto Rico. Over the past 11 years, Moriviví has completed murals and community projects across the archipelago of Puerto Rico, the U.S., and internationally in China and Australia. Their work extends throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora via muralism festivals, projects, lectures, and collaborations across New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Iowa. Moriviví has been awarded support from Art Matters Foundation, FRIDA Young Feminist Fund, Mellon Foundation, Hearthland Foundation, María Fund, and NALAC, among others. Colectivo Moriví currently has 6 members and continues to evolve as a platform for artistic practice, political imagination, and community empowerment.
colectivomorivivi.com | @colectivo_morivivi
Rosa Colón Guerra
Rosa Colón Guerra has self-published comics in San Juan, Puerto Rico as Soda Pop Comics for over 19 years. She works as a freelance illustrator in San Juan and is represented by Marietta B. Zacker (Galt & Zacker). Colón Guerra is part of Les Insu, a collective of illustrators who focus on strengthening the illustration arts community in Puerto Rico; and is also co-founder of Tintero: Festival de Cómics y Arte Independiente de PR which ran from 2014 until 2019 and returned in 2024. She’s been published in The Nib, The Believer, The Lily (Washington Post), and various anthologies. Colón Guerra collaborated on Puerto Rico Strong (Lion Forge), winner of the Eisner for Best Anthology 2019 and Be Gay, Do Comics! (The Nib), winner of the Ignatz for Outstanding Anthology 2020. Rosa is also the illustrator of the PROMESA board game designed in collaboration with MIT Game Lab, inspired by the political and economic realities of Puerto Rico. She has a BA in Humanities-Fine Arts from the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras) and an MA in Sequential Art and Illustration from the University of Brighton.
rosacolonguerra.com | @sodapopcomics
Brenda Torres-Figueroa
Brenda Torres-Figueroa is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator whose practice excavates the emotional geology of displacement, nostalgia, and ancestral memory. She was born in Puerto Rico, is based in Chicago, and is alumna of the University of Puerto Rico (BFA), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. Torres-Figueroa has spent more than two decades devising pedagogies and artworks that decolonize official histories while centering Afro-Puerto Rican narratives. Her long-term series, Dressed as Home and Refuge (2000–), and the performance-driven Residual (2025—) turns architectural garments, repurposed artifacts, family heirlooms, and recollected natural objects and their memories into living archives. Torres-Figueroa is founder of the arts space El Schomburg, dedicated to Puerto Rican and Diaspora art. This space expands her practice, turning personal and collective grief into radical cartographies of belonging. She is also founder of Colectivo Sayba, a bomba dance group that upholds AfroBoricua traditions of rhythm and dance.
elschomburg.com | @performatum @elschomburg @colectivosayba
Leenda Bonilla
Leenda Bonilla is an interdisciplinary artist, arts and culture producer, and specialist in civic engagement through the arts. Bonilla’s practice is influenced by her background and cultural roots; she was born in NYC, raised in The Bronx and Puerto Rico. Her work focuses on reconstructing contemporary narratives of her Puerto Rican heritage and her artistic practice is integral to how she engages el mundo. Her creative career traversed from magazine publishing, to non-profit arts management, and into the public sector. Bonilla now works in community development, focusing on rebuilding civic engagement via the arts; and has developed numerous collaborative and civically-engaged cultural projects that support community activism in New York City neighborhoods. Bonilla has exhibited work at Art in Odd Places, (NYC), AS220 (RI), The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York Botanical Garden, Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture (Bx,NY), El Taller Boricua (NYC), MOLAA (LA), among others. She was Artist-in-Residence at the prestigious Surf Point Residence in York, ME; and 2015 AS220 Artist-in-Residence in Providence, RI. Bonilla is a fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Leadership Institute & Arts Advocacy Programs. Leenda holds a Masters from the Pratt Institute in Arts/Cultural Management and a BA in Political Science/International Studies from Manhattan College.
leendabonilla.com | @leenda.art
Angélica Rivera Reyes
Angélica Rivera Reyes is a Puerto Rican artist working in the mediums of painting, drawing, relief printing, and ceramics. Her works are part of important public and private collections in and outside of Puerto Rico. She has participated in more than forty solo and group exhibitions in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, New York, Texas, Peru, Miami, and Argentina. From 2018 to 2022, she was Artist-in-Residence on Barbosa Street in the Municipality of Bayamón; and from 2018 to 2023, she was a professor in the Painting Department of the School of Plastic Arts and Design of Puerto Rico. Rivera Reyes currently directs and coordinates the exhibitions and educational activities of the Joaquín Parrilla Art Gallery at Casa Pueblo in Adjuntas, while continuing to produce her artwork focused on ecological and spiritual themes. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the School of Plastic Arts of Puerto Rico, a Master’s degree from the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and a Bachelor’s degree in Art Education.
angelicariverareyes.com | @angelica_rivera_pr
Vero Rivera
Vero Rivera was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work is built around her interest in the contradictions that surround us and our interactions with nature, such as the ephemeral qualities of life resisting the human need or desire of durability and preservation. Rivera highlights the ornamental qualities of botanical elements, creating designs that represent how human relations -including her own- mimic nature’s ability to adapt, heal and strive depending on its surroundings, experiences or relation to time. Rivera was a Beyond Walls Mural Artist in 2022, producing a new mural in Holyoke, MA.
beyondwalls.org/artists/vero/ | @veroverorivera
Lydia Pérez Nieves
Lydia Pérez Nieves is the founder of the Puerto Rican Institute for Arts and Advocacy, Inc. (PRIAA) and Yoruba 2, an award-winning traditional Puerto Rican music ensemble dedicated to preserving bomba, plena, and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. She is also the Artistic Director of the Cultural Heritage Center (CHC) in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Afro-descendant and Puerto Rican musical traditions are preserved as a living cultural practice. For more than 33 years, Pérez has worked as a performer, cultural educator, woodcarving artisan, and cultural activist across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Her multidisciplinary practice includes traditional saint carving, papier-mâché vejigante mask making, and intergenerational cultural transmission of Caribbean ancestral musical practice. In 2019, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture invited her to represent Puerto Rico at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, recognizing her as a cultural ambassador of Boricua folklore. In 2021, she established the Cultural Heritage Center as a hub for PRIAA’s cultural exchange and education. Under her leadership, PRIAA became Rhode Island’s sole recipient of the NEA and NEFA ArtsHERE award, and in 2025, she received the City of Pawtucket’s Education and Community Impact Award.
Linda Fernández
Linda Fernández is a muralist, interdisciplinary, and social practice artist of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Polish heritage. She is a founding member of Amber Art and Design, an artist collective based in Philadelphia that creates public art through engagement with community members. She uses visual art and muralism to create pathways for collective ideas and dreams. Her artistic practice is rooted in collaboration and involves a creative exchange of messages, artworks, and personal artifacts between people across physical, social, and cultural divides. Solidarity, unity and a sense of belonging are created through this creative exchange. Linda has earned a Bachelor’s degree in Art Education from Tyler School of Art, a certificate in Contemporary Art from Metafora Escola de Arte Contemporaneo in Barcelona, Spain, and a Master’s in Public Administration from Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs.
lindafernandezart.com | @lindafernandy @amberpublicart
Organizer
