The Arizona State University Art Museum presents the first solo museum exhibition of Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist Luis Rivera Jimenez. 

Luis Rivera Jimenez is a Black multidisciplinary Dominican and Puerto Rican artist and researcher based in Puerto Rico who works with physical and digital materials to create spaces and experiences for possible reconfigurations of western epistemologies and racial structures.

Rivera Jimenez’s artistic practice takes “digital global society” as a starting point and borrows language and forms from contemporary art, anarchist political thought, psychoanalysis and the Caribbean quotidian, a press release explained.

His first solo exhibition features newly created works completed while in residence with CALA Alliance in early 2023. These works, ranging from sculpture and installation to authored texts and audio, offer space for discussion around race, identity and power. 

“Luis Rivera Jiménez: A Brief Proposal on Race and Cultural Cosplay'' expands upon the artist’s practice, which uses the intricacies of language, political thought and daily experience in the Caribbean to create intentional spaces of learning, conversation and care. 

Rivera Jimenez’s sculptural objects and installations pose questions about the dynamics of race and representation. 

“My work and research for this exhibition are built off the generosity of the Phoenix community that continues to be open to discussing their struggles with unfair narratives, racism and history,” said Rivera Jimenez in the release. “The work in the show is asking for all of us to engage with these challenging discussions, which are increasingly more difficult to have in the United States; I hope this exhibition can be one such place to have them.” 

His practice reflects upon and explores the underpinning of what he describes as a “global digital society,” where a relationship between memory, images, and symbols can be traced, mapped and proliferated, the release stated. 

This interactive exhibition is informed by communications, encounters and materials found by Rivera Jimenez during his time in Phoenix. 

The objects and texts found within the show build on the artist’s accumulation and processing of various tools: discussions, found objects, experiences in contact with communities, digital content and physical and ephemeral materials.

As language is the primary medium for the artist to facilitate potentially complicated discussions surrounding race, some works in the exhibition utilize a more ephemeral approach. 

“Phatic Function #2,” 2023, features a series of wall-to-ceiling phrases and statements culled from the artist’s conversations in Phoenix, music or other aspects of pop culture. 

Through over 200 quotations, the artist anticipates that these pithy texts will resonate differently with visitors, as each person is unique in their individualized experience through life. 

Behind the exhibit

The exhibition is curated by Alana Hernandez, CALA Alliance curator of Latinx art at the ASU Art Museum, with Sade Moore, curatorial assistant at CALA Alliance. 

This exhibition showcases, in part, a partnership between CALA Alliance and ASU Art Museum. CALA Alliance and ASU Art Museum work in collaboration to achieve their shared mission of incubating and accelerating the presence of Latinx art in the United States. 

“I am immensely grateful for the trust and partnership of Luis in every stage of planning his first museum presentation,” said Hernandez. “Given this unique situation of working so closely together over several months and our time together in the studio at CALA Alliance, I have understood how critical Luis’s work is to the larger discourse on race and representation in the United States and Puerto Rico, in the art world and beyond.”

Gifts to CALA Alliance’s general operating fund and a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts contributed to this new exhibition. 

Visitors will encounter videos and readings selected by the artist within the library space. In addition, the exhibition includes a series of mental maps that endeavor to track the flows and networks of a shared global digital culture, the release explained. 

These maps range from the difficult to the frivolous and track racialized conditions in our society. These meditations on culture act as snapshots, where the public is invited to add to these collective mapping with their thoughts, experiences and memories. 

Importantly, the artist has created this space for visitors to return to several times throughout the exhibition’s run. The exhibition will be on view from Aug. 19 through Dec. 31, at the ASU Art Museum at Nelson Fine Arts Center.