Through Her Lens: Caribbean Image Makers
The Puerto Rican Arts Alliance (PRAA) is pleased to present Through Her Lens: Caribbean Image Makers, a group exhibition featuring six lens-based artists whose work explores Caribbean identity, migration, memory, and belonging across diasporic spaces. The exhibition is on view through July 25, 2026.
Bringing together artists working across documentary, ethnographic, conceptual, and research-based photography, Through Her Lens centers women image-makers whose practices expand photography beyond documentation into a form of witnessing, care, and cultural record-keeping. The exhibition highlights how photography operates as a visual archive of movement, ritual, survival, and cultural continuity across the Caribbean and its global diasporas.
Featured artists include Sonia Báez-Hernández, Lisa DuBois, Brenda Lee Hernández Díaz, Qurissy, Alexandra Majerus, and Tameshia Glass. Their work spans multiple geographies—including Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Canada, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Cuba, and beyond—reflecting the Caribbean as both a region and a network of lived diasporic experiences.
Sonia Báez-Hernández’s interdisciplinary practice examines migration, illness, and the body as a political and poetic site. Lisa DuBois documents ritual and cultural expression within Black diasporic communities, emphasizing photography’s capacity to witness spiritual and communal life. Brenda Lee Hernández Díaz explores introspection and transformation through documentary and conceptual approaches. Qurissy’s work centers Afro–Puerto Rican lineage and the stateside experience through image and oral narrative. Alexandra Majerus interrogates representation, tourism, and postcolonial identity within Caribbean landscapes. Tameshia Glass presents documentary portraits of Chicago residents, positioning the city as a diasporic space shaped by migration and memory.
Together, these artists offer layered perspectives on Caribbean identity in contemporary contexts, examining how culture is held, transmitted, and reshaped across borders and generations. The exhibition foregrounds photography as a relational practice—connecting photographer and subject, homeland and diaspora, personal narrative and collective history.
Curated by Jorge Félix, Director of Exhibitions & Collections at PRAA, Through Her Lens reflects the organization’s ongoing commitment to community-based curatorial practice and diasporic cultural preservation. The exhibition complements PRAA’s broader archive initiatives, including El Archivo Project, which documents the histories and contributions of Puerto Rican communities in Chicago and the Midwest.
The exhibition is FREE Admission and open to the public Tue to Fri: 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM, and by appointment on Saturdays or during non-gallery hours. To schedule visits during non-gallery hours, email Jorge Felix at [email protected]. Guests will have the opportunity to meet participating artists and learn more about the exhibition’s themes and related programming.
About the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance (PRAA) The Puerto Rican Arts Alliance is a multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Puerto Rican and Caribbean arts and culture through exhibitions, performances, education, and community-based archival initiatives. Through its Exhibitions & Collections Program and El Archivo Project, PRAA documents and shares the cultural histories of Puerto Rican and Caribbean communities in Chicago and the Midwest.
Media Contact: Jorge Félix Director, Exhibitions & Collections Program Puerto Rican Arts Alliance [email protected] | +1 (773)620-8608
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