Overview: Puerto Rican Arts Alliance’s “Through Her Lens: Caribbean Image Makers”

Lisa DuBois “Black Women in White (Coney Island),” digital, 2025. Courtesy Puerto Rican Arts Alliance

All six girls within the present exhibition on the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance have ties to the Caribbean and supply various modes of pictures on this fascinating present, from documentary to portraiture and conceptual set up. Each makes use of pictures to inform tales of the diaspora and their very own place inside it.

Qurissy “Stateside,” digital, 2025. Courtesy Puerto Rican Arts Alliance

Lisa DuBois, a New York photojournalist and curator whose work is documentary in essence, research tradition and ritual throughout the Black Diasporic group in locations as various as Harlem and New Orleans. DuBois’ pictures on this present are from her “Holy Water” sequence through which Caribbean girls dance within the sea, a sacred act of group, custom and powerful spirituality, whereas Tameshia Glass images folks in on a regular basis conditions that commemorate belonging and the great thing about the abnormal. Chicago artist Qurissy’s work speaks of Black identification, storytelling and care. Her intimate portraits are primarily based on belief and collaboration along with her topics, and her work positive aspects its energy from household historical past and Black lineage. Her highly effective portraits on this present are each tender and powerful, portraying the dichotomy in every of the ladies she images. The large-format analog work is printed on glass, referencing the ocean glass of Puerto Rican shores. The venture is titled “Stateside,” and options portraits of Black girls of Puerto Rican descent.

Sonia Báez Hernández “Untitled,” digital, 2025. Courtesy Puerto Rican Arts Alliance

Alexandra Majerus, who has lived on numerous Caribbean islands in addition to in France, creates a full wall set up composed of varied images addressing the impact of rising up white on assorted Afro-Caribbean islands, surrounded by water. The societal expectations positioned on her and the advanced notion of residence inform her work, together with this, her “But Not Enough” sequence. Sonia Báez Hernández, who was born in Santo Domingo and raised in Puerto Rico, makes use of her digital camera to painting states of migration and social points present within the Caribbean. Her work on this exhibition makes use of desiccated leaves as a metaphor for human struggling and decay.

The sole video piece within the present was created by Puerto Rican Chicagoan Brenda Lee Hernández Díaz, who bases her work on the exploration of on a regular basis life experiences in a wide range of locations she travels. Her “Mánifesto. Sincopada 19,” a sixteen-minute loop with music composed by Javier Núñea Estrada, reveals the artist putting small pictures on the partitions of a mannequin dwelling the place the mattress, dresser, chair, desk and artwork would go. This symbolizes a way of settling in, little by little, in the end making a facsimile of residence, a spot through which to stay after a time of uprootedness, whereas the accompanying textual content reads like poetry and speaks of loss and disappointment. In all of the works on this present, the artists supply a view of their lives as girls, as members of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, and of their capability and need to characterize themselves and their heritage by pictures.

“Through Her Lens: Caribbean Image Makers” on the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, 3000 North Elbridge, by July 3.