Brenda Torres-Figueroa

Contact

Brenda Torres-Figueroa is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and art educator born and raised in Puerto Rico. Torres-Figueroa graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras and has a Master's in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Torres-Figueroa is also an alum of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (‘02).

Brenda holds over two decades of teaching, research practice, and professional curatorial experience focused on interdisciplinary pedagogical methodology and praxis focused on mapping art and storytelling through an intentional process of decolonizing traditional and contemporary art practices and history. Since 2008, Brenda has been devoted to her art education practice and raising her two daughters.

In 2011, she branded her artwork through Freedom Effect, and in 2023, founded El Schomburg, Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, a space inspired by the legacy and vision of Afro-Puerto Rican historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. El Schomburg prioritizes the visibility, circulation, and production of art from Puerto Rico and its Diaspora.

In 2018, as her homeland recovered from the devastation caused by Hurricane María, she began re-staging and curating almost two decades of unedited work that questioned the complex variables of invisibility, homesickness, grief, and resistance embedded within the idea of home. Her exhibition/event series, Dressed as Home and Refuge, investigates the transnational and intergenerational effects of homesickness and nostalgia through photography, mixed media, and performance art/installations.