The Evolving Landscape of Latinx Art:Five Artists Redefining Boundaries

In August 2020, a Pew Research Center poll discovered that just three percent of the Hispanic population in the United States identifies as Latinx. Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at Pew, explained that their rejection of the word had nothing to do with its inclusive framework but rather its limited means to describe the population as a whole. The outcome, he said, “reflects the diversity of the nation’s Hispanic population, and the Hispanic population of the U.S. thinks of itself in many different ways.”

This sentiment resonates through the diverse body of work produced by Latinx artists today. The following list showcases artists hailing from all over the Americas, stretching from Argentina to New York. They bring forth an array of cultural archetypes, histories, and experiences that carefully deconstruct persistent colonial power structures and demand liberation from their grasp. Many of these artists are self-taught, raised on freestyling and graffiti, and powered by the sense of community that permeates daily life. From painting and collage to sculpture and installation, these artists dive into relational and conceptual territories unique to their cultural milieus, creating provocative works of art that tell their stories with authority.

Angel Otero

B. 1981, Santurce, Puerto Rico. Lives and works in New York.

Angel Otero reimagines the possibilities of oil paint, creating works by layering the material onto a glass surface until it dries, then scraping it off to create what he calls “oil paint skins.” He collages these skins into large-scale abstract works, resembling fierce forces of nature that could swallow you whole.

Otero’s intentional warping of material nods to his exploration of memory, a primary subject that persists throughout his oeuvre. Through his work, one might reflect on how the shapes, sensations, and structures of our histories are distorted by outside forces. These paintings are also deeply personal for Otero, generally reflecting his childhood growing up in Santurce, Puerto Rico. Recently, everyday objects like tablecloths, chairs, or curtains have found their way into his work.

Glendalys Medina

B. 1979, Puerto Rico. Lives and works in New York.

Glendalys Medina wants to rewire your brain. Her practice is fueled by the work of inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who posits that human pattern recognition is so well attuned that we can detect even the tiniest disruption, shifting our perception and, perhaps, even altering our behavior. Armed with these findings, Medina investigates patterns and reframes them, embedding them with iconography drawn from rhythms, movements, motifs, and gestures.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx, most of the symbols in Medina’s work are drawn from cultural vernacular swirling around her history and daily life—from the cadence of hip-hop rhymes to the fluid signatures of graffiti writers and traditional Taíno motifs. Medina sees her geometric works as explorations of new forms toward instilling a broader, more loving perspective of the world around us.

Guadalupe Maravilla

B. 1976, El Salvador. Lives and works in Brooklyn and Richmond, Virginia.

A day after a gunman slayed 23 people—most of them Hispanic—at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Guadalupe Maravilla was scheduled to perform at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, accompanying his exhibition of sculptural, wearable headdresses and gongs designed for therapeutic cleansing. But after these tragic events, Maravilla decided that his therapy needed to go deeper. He altered the performance to engage the audience more meaningfully: Attendees volunteered to stand before the room and read the obituaries of the slain. As the spectators’ buzz faded to silence, and later, to quiet weeping, the gravitas of Maravilla’s practice came to the fore.
A healer, activist, and artist, Maravilla’s work—incorporating sculpture, performance, and drawing—traces his narrative as an undocumented migrant child who arrived in the United States from war-ravaged El Salvador in the 1980s. His works involve materials charged with mystic energy, invoking sound and spirituality as essential elements.

Joiri Minaya

B. 1990, New York. Lives and works in New York.

Throughout the early 20th century, Caribbean women were exoticized and fetishized in advertising images across America and Europe, positioned as playthings for vacationing white men. Joiri Minaya, a Dominican artist born in New York and raised in Santo Domingo, repositions this gaze by deconstructing fragments of the female body, suspending them in air against tropical backdrops in illusory ways. Her figures, often obscured or blending into their backgrounds, operate as mechanisms from which Minaya liberates Caribbean women from a patriarchal, colonial framework, while alluding to her own experience of living between the Dominican Republic and the United States.
Minaya’s most powerful works incorporate performance, wallpaper, digital collage, and sculpture, such as wrapping colonial monuments in cities like Miami with her tropical cloaks—ones she often wraps her own body in before photographing herself in public spaces.

Agustina Woodgate

B. 1981, Buenos Aires. Lives and works in Amsterdam and Miami.

Agustina Woodgate uses mass-manufactured consumer products like maps, clocks, and toys to reveal the hidden structures of power that govern our everyday lives. Her materials are often taken apart, then reassembled in aesthetic works revealing specific political mechanisms. She’s particularly interested in how private materials can enter the public realm, such as when a beloved stuffed animal or personal map is discarded or donated, beginning its second life.

Woodgate’s seminal series “Animal Rug Company (ARC)” exemplifies her multifarious interests: ARC works take apart teddy bears sourced from Goodwill, which are then stitched back together by seamstresses in colorful patterns using traditional quiltmaking techniques. These rugs, hung as tapestries, reveal the unseen cycle of mass consumption, offer work to the underemployed, and transform a beloved object into communal art. Other works involve sanding down maps or bills, blurring and subverting geographic or economic borders, and collecting the residue in tiny jars inserted into sculptures resembling the cosmos.

These artists, each unique in their approach and vision, contribute to the rich tapestry of Latinx art, challenging and redefining the boundaries of identity, culture, and expression.