New York City, NY (June 4, 2024) – The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College has announced a new documentary series titled Diasporican Art in Motion Docuseries, which will premiere on June 6, 2025, on CENTRO’s YouTube channel, with a biweekly release schedule.
This portrait series highlights 10 Puerto Rican artists living and creating in New York City—one of the most significant cultural hubs of the Puerto Rican diaspora– as part of CENTRO’s Diasporican Art in Motion (DAM) initiative, a digital repository and research catalyst that serves as a living archive of Puerto Rican cultural expression in the U.S. diaspora. The initiative is partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and U.S. Congress.
The series spans a wide range of disciplines—including painting, performance, multimedia, sculpture, photography, and more—the featured artists reflect a spectrum of experiences and professional stages, from emerging to established. Their work reveals the nuances of diasporic life, exploring themes of identity, memory, intersectionality, struggle, survival, activism, and community. Rooted in their communities but deeply engaged with the broader artistic discourse of New York City, these artists navigate layered identities and histories while contributing to the vibrant, ever-evolving cultural fabric of the city. The Diasporican Art in Motion Docuseries not only honors individual creativity but also foregrounds the collective power of art as a force for reflection, resistance, and transformation within diasporic spaces.
“With the release of the Diasporican Art in Motion Docuseries, we take another step in amplifying the voices of Puerto Rican artists in the diaspora. As the second phase of our DAM initiative —along with our recent writing commissions—the docuseries complements our growing database by creating space not only for academic and curatorial reflection, but for artists’ narratives to take center stage,” said Ángel Antonio Ruiz-Laboy, CENTRO’s Associate Director of Arts and Culture.
Glorimar García and Carlos Rivera Fernández, Centro Art Researcher and DAM Project Manager and DAM Media Producer, respectively, produced the series.
Below are the titles of each episode, their descriptions, the date of release. For more information about CENTRO’s Diasporican Art in Motion (DAM) initiative and its artists, click here.
- Episode 1 – Nora Maité Nieves: The Memory and Finding of Home
- Scheduled for June 6, 2025
- Mixed-media painter Nora Maité Nieves shares how her upbringing, past work as a jewelry maker, and migration to Chicago and New York have influenced her recent projects rooted in ideas of home, fertility, womanhood, and ornamentation. We join her in her studio and in Times Square to view her stop motion animation Midnight Moment project: Eyes of the Sea, a mythological genesis tale told through color, shape, and movement.
- Episode 2 – Christopher López: Readjusting the historical lens
- Scheduled for June 20, 2025, at 10:00am ET
- Bronx-born photographer Christopher López shares his work as a lens-based artist and public historian, which showcases the untold stories of Puerto Ricans from Hoboken, New Jersey, to the archipelago through oral history, research, and photography.
- Episode 3 – Yanira Castro: A Score for Liberation
- Scheduled for July 4, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- Performance artist Yanira Castro shares how her work is a medium to connect and engage with the Puerto Rican diaspora and the American public. Focusing on ideas of consent, refusal, political theater, and the colonial relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, we watch her first public art project, Exorcism = Liberation, come to life.
- Episode 4 – Rodríguez Calero: Revisioning Layers
- Scheduled for July 18, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- Artist Rodríguez Calero shares how she found her artistic voice after migrating back to Puerto Rico and studying art before going on to have a professional artistic career in New York City. Rodríguez Calero coined the technique “acrollage,” a blend of printmaking, collage, and acrylic techniques, while also incorporating art historical artworks, gender, sexuality, and sociopolitical issues into her work.
- Episode 5 – Manny Vega: A Mosaic of Spiritual Rhythm
- Scheduled for August 1, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- Manny Vega takes us on a journey of his life and career, starting with his origins as a muralist and printmaker in the Bronx and El Barrio—making the streets of New York City his gallery—to a seminal trip to Brazil and adoption into the Candomblé community, and finally to his recent solo show and art residency at the Museum of the City of New York.
- Episode 6 – María Domínguez: Healing as Activism
- Scheduled for August 15, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- Muralist María Domínguez, takes us from her upbringing in the Lower East Side (Loisaida), New York, where art became her outlet for activism. Through community projects, her commission with the MTA, new murals, and a series of portraits, Domínguez highlights the New York Puerto Rican community and its heroes.
- Episode 7 – Jorge Luis Rodríguez: Sculpting Magic
- Scheduled for August 29, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- As the 40th anniversary of “Growth”—the first commission under NYC’s Percent for Art program—approaches, Jorge Luis Rodríguez continues to create public art that connects communities and honors shared histories. With new projects and exhibitions on the horizon, Rodríguez remains deeply engaged in examining the role of public art within the fabric of urban life.
- Episode 8 – Juanita Lanzo: The Gestures of Embodiment
- Scheduled for September 12, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- Juanita Lanzo, an Afro-Puerto Rican New York based artist whose work explores narratives of the body and sexuality—often considered “abject”through drawings and watercolors. Lanzo, who is also an accomplished curator, creates art that is intimate, political, and deeply rooted in cultural memory.
- Episode 9 – David Antonio Cruz: Reimagining Family
- Scheduled for September 26, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- David Antonio Cruz is a Philadelphia-born artist whose work explores the intersectionality and visibility of black and brown queer bodies. Through painting and performance, he addresses themes of forgiveness, healing, revisiting history, joy and chosen family. His recent projects—including When the Children Come Home, presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the Sugar Hill Museum in Harlem—trace his personal and collective journeys across cities and generations.
- Episode 10 – Lee Quiñones: Urban and Domestic Atmospheres
- Scheduled for October 10, 2025 at 10:00am ET
- Lee Quiñones, a pioneer of urban art, has evolved his practice from subway trains to museum walls. His recent works explore domestic life, reflecting his personal growth and artistic development within the urban landscape of the Lower East Side that has long been his canvas.