Katherine E. Nash Gallery

The Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, in association with Hidrante, San Juan, is proud to present Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora, a multidisciplinary exhibition spanning twenty-five years of Puerto Rican artistic production from forty-three artists working in Puerto Rico and its U.S. diaspora. Derived from Spanish for “back-and-forth movement,” vaivén is most associated with the supposed ease at which Puerto Ricans migrate between the United States and Puerto Rico. Beyond the comings and goings of travel, this word names decades of physical and cultural ebb and flow that have resulted in more persons of Puerto Rican descent living across the fifty United States than in Puerto Rico itself. In turn, to be Puerto Rican is to be inextricably linked to diaspora, Black and Caribbean epistemologies, and a constant reimagining of home and belonging. 

By tracing conceptual and aesthetic intersections across a range of approaches to image- and mark-making, sculpture and installation, and sound and video, artists explore the hybridity of memory, language, and place as they relate to acts of witnessing, resistance, and connection. Works in the exhibition bear witness to a quarter century of cultural, political, and migratory oscillations, while challenging dominant cultural narratives of “island” post-disaster resiliency versus “mainland” diasporic neither-here-nor-there identity. Rather than following a linear trajectory, the exhibition documents Puerto Rican artistic production across time and place to challenge the geographic and cultural authenticity, racialization, and classism that have shaped which voices define Puerto Rican contemporary art, and which continue to be devalued.

Artists in the exhibition include Candida Alvarez, Genesis Báez, Sula Bermudez-Silverman, Ricardo Cabret, Melissa Calderón, Rodríguez Calero, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Gisela Colón, Cristina Córdova, David Antonio Cruz, Maritza Dávila-Irizarry, Larissa De Jesús Negrón, Ada del Pilar Ortiz, Estrella Esquilín, Mónica Félix, Cándida González, GeoVanna Gonzalez, Ivelisse Jiménez, Juanita Lanzo, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Olivia Levins Holden, Ricardo Levins Morales, Nora Maité Nieves, Héctor Méndez Caratini, Colectivo Moriviví, Javier Orfón, Josué Pellot, Joey Quiñones, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, Elizabeth Robles, Amber Robles-Gordon, Jezabeth Roca González, Shellyne Rodriguez, Luis Rodríguez Rosario, Raúl Romero, G. Rosa-Rey, Juan Sánchez, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Amarise Deán Santo, Edra Soto, Bibiana Suárez, Nitza Tufiño, and William Villalongo.

Related Events
Saturday, November 15, 2025
BOMBA: A Film by Jasmira Colón
2:00-3:30 pm, InFlux Space E110, Regis Center for Art
405 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455

This documentary explores how Boricuas use Bomba—an African-Puerto Rican and Indigenous dance and folkloric art—as a tool for social resistance, liberation, and unity across Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Come learn how Bomba—one of Puerto Rico’s oldest musical genres derived from enslaved West African Ancestors—continues to make a profound impact on the world and serves as a powerful reminder to remember who you are and never forget your history. A conversation with director Jasmira Colón and featured dancers follows the screening. Co-sponsored by BORIKEN Cultural Center and St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN).

Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Place-Keepers: Boricua Community Led Muralism
5:00-6:15 pm CDT, Online event
Register here.

Moderated by Jessica Lopez Lyman, this online event features muralists Olivia Levins Holden and Colectivo Moriviví, and highlights how artivism—a combination of art and activism, solidarity movements, and mural traditions rooted in Chicanx feminism—is essential to how they work in community. Co-sponsored by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO).
Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Guest Lecture: Jorell Meléndez-Badillo
5:00 - 6:30pm, Cowles Auditorium, 301 S 19th Ave, Minneapolis
Closing reception to follow at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery

Exhibition Catalogue
Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora represents the first bilingual English and Spanish catalogue published by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery and is distributed by University of Minnesota Press. This fully illustrated volume features contributions from Arlene Dávila, Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, Teréz Iacovino, José López Serra, María Elena Ortiz, Carlos Ortiz Burgos, and Monica Uszerowicz. Purchase through University of Minnesota Press: upress.umn.edu.

Related Commission
A mural commission between Olivia Levins Holden and Colectivo Moriviví will be publicly installed in Minnesota and Río Piedras, Puerto Rico in the Summer of 2026. These sister murals are painted on Polytab—a durable, easily portable material that lends itself to mural making across geographies, as the artists worked with their local Puerto Rican communities to guide the final designs. Selections of the mural will be on view in the Regis Center for Art lobby as part of Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora. 

Organization and Sponsorship
Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora is made possible by generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts, and the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund. The exhibition is curated by Teréz Iacovino, director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, and José López Serra, director of Hidrante, San Juan.

Related programming is made possible by co-sponsorship from BORIKEN Cultural Center, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO), Graywolf Press, St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN), and the University of Minnesota including the Departments of Art, Art History, Chicano and Latino Studies, and English; the Immigration History Research Center; the Office for Public Engagement; and the University Libraries Francis V. Gorman Rare Art Books, Media, and Artist Archives Collection.