From San Juan to the world: how EMBAJADA is advancing Puerto Rican art

Puerto Rico has no embassies of its own, but in Hato Rey there is one that has been practicing a kind of cultural diplomacy for nearly 11 years. galería EMBAJADA connects Puerto Rican artists with curators, collectors, museums and international fairs, while bringing proposals from other parts of the world to the Island.

“The name is also that of a cultural embassy, one that functions as an exchange, a representation and a connection with other art scenes around the world. That is what I aspire to, my north star: that you go to Mexico, to New York, to Colombia, and find galleries like mine”.

Why does it matter? For a gallery like EMBAJADA, selling a work is only part of the job. Its goal, according to Rivera, is to increase the artists' "cultural capital": building their careers through connections with curators, museums, collectors and galleries, and taking their work to international fairs.

• "Almost 100% of the pieces (on display in the gallery) are for sale, and the purpose is to cultivate young collectors," Rivera added about EMBAJADA's mission.

• They also represent young artists such as Kianí del Valle, a multidisciplinary artist, dancer and choreographer for Lorde who has also collaborated with RaiNao and Young Miko and performed at La Biennale di Venezia, as well as more experienced artists such as Pablo Delano, a visual artist and photographer interested in the lives and histories of Caribbean and Latin American communities.

The story behind EMBAJADA

Before creating EMBAJADA, Rivera had already begun building a network within the international art circuit. After graduating from the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR), he worked at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), where he collaborated on the II Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan: América Latina y el Caribe (2008-09) and met Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa, one of his mentors. "This was a great source of inspiration for me," he said.

He then left to pursue a master's degree in New York, where his art was inspired by his life between two cities. He worked at galleries including Marlborough, was part of La Bienal 2013 de El Museo del Barrio, and met his wife, Manuela Paz, while she was working at The Armory Show, one of the most important international contemporary and modern art fairs in the world.

Together they co-founded EMBAJADA in San Juan in 2015 in response to "a crisis of art spaces" and to promote Puerto Rican and Caribbean artists internationally. "From the beginning we brought in international artists who were at an important moment in their careers," Rivera said.

The name EMBAJADA. Beyond that cultural and artistic exchange, the name also comes from "our eternal colonial existential crisis" and from Rivera's love of law and politics.

• Its website, embajadada.com, references the Dadá movement founded in Switzerland in 1916 with the aim of rebelling against the arts, a kind of mocking, irrational and rule-free artistic expression.

“Art gives you that freedom to play with those concepts. EMBAJADA, taking advantage of the fact that Puerto Rico has no embassy, does the work of bringing international artists here, acting as an ambassador that takes artists to other levels”.

New exhibitions at EMBAJADA

From Aug. 26 through Oct. 24, EMBAJADA has two exhibitions on display, which you can visit free on Fridays and Saturdays from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.:

Chamanes y Robots: This group exhibition, curated by Mexican curator Ana Gabriela García, "addresses different ideas about metaphysics, specifically what we refer to as spirituality, but also with a robotic sense, of how robots try to be more human or humans try to be more like robots," Rivera explained.

• It represents 11 artists based in Berlin, among them the Puerto Rican Chaveli Sifre, who participated in the Profiles | Latin American Art section at ARCOmadrid 2025 alongside EMBAJADA, and the Spanish artist of Cuban descent Eli Cortiñas, who is currently showing La máquina sueña con humo at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.

• Other artists: Ana Alenso, Elisa Balmaceda, Ivana de Vivanco, Ruben D'Hers, Jakob Forster, Laura Arminda Kingsley, Nicole L'Huillier, Vibeke Mascini and Simon Shim-Sutcliffe.

Todo y Nada, Pero Sobre Todo Nada: This is the first solo exhibition by Puerto Rican artist Fernando Pintado, who draws on literature and reflects on death and how closely it has touched him.

• "It's a series of silkscreens on sheets from his family's home, the house where he grew up, with floral patterns. It's an installation of 10 deaths… It's this idea that death is wrapping around you when you stand in the exhibition," Rivera said of the artistic proposal.

EMBAJADA at international art fairs

EMBAJADA has maintained a consistent presence at international art fairs, with participation in fairs such as ARCOmadrid (Spain), NADA Miami (United States), Liste Art Fair Basel (Switzerland) and Frieze London (England), one of the most influential contemporary art fairs in the world.

"I have always believed that you have to leave the island and draw nourishment from outside. And think about how to bring that nourishment back here," Rivera said.

Upcoming fairs. From Sept. 24 to 27, EMBAJADA is one of three Puerto Rican galleries participating in The Armory Show, held annually at the Javits Center in New York.

Their booth will feature Puerto Rican artists Nora Maité Nieves, the first Puerto Rican to show her digital art on the screens of Times Square and an experienced multidisciplinary artist, and Joshua Nazario Lugo, who was among those who created art for the official merchandise for the closing of Bad Bunny's world tour at Hiram Bithorn and whose art also appeared in several of the videos for Debí Tirar Más Fotos. He had his debut show at EMBAJADA in 2024, called ORO, at just 23 years old and continues to exhibit in Puerto Rico and the United States. The works Bad Bunny owns by Nazario Lugo were purchased at EMBAJADA.

At the same fair, another of the artists they represent, María Lucía "Lulú" Varona, will present her work in the booth of El Museo del Barrio, the leading museum in the United States dedicated to Puerto Rican, Caribbean, Latino and Latin American art and culture, which was awarded the Armory Spotlight prize. Varona will present textile art through which she reflects on memory, the diaspora and the legacy of the needlework industry.

They will also participate in arteba, an international art fair in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they will present work by Puerto Rican artists Nazario Lugo, Radamés "Juni" Figueroa and Gabriella Torres Ferrer.

• Figueroa paints everyday images of the Caribbean and his work is held at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and in the exhibition Dancing the Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.

• Torres Ferrer, as a multimedia artist, explores power dynamics and means of exchange, and has presented her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art and El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Museum der Arbeit in Germany and elsewhere.

Rivera will also travel to Brazil with Pablo Delano, who will be the first Puerto Rican to present work at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) with his exhibition "The Museum of the Old Colony", curated by Pedrosa. The exhibition, whose name is inspired by the Old Colony soft drink, is a conceptual art show featuring photographs (including some by his father, Jack Delano), magazines, newspapers and other objects, and it questions the way Puerto Rico has been represented in American discourse. It has been shown at various museums around the world.

This content was translated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI).