BIOGRAPHY
Bayamón, Puerto Rico, 1984
Sarabel Santos-Negrón is a contemporary artist, educator and museum professional. Her artwork is informed by the study of nature through its social, political and ecological territories. She earned an MFA in Studio Art from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore; an MAE in Museum Studies from Caribbean University, Puerto Rico; a BFA in Painting and Art History from the University of Puerto Rico; and Art History studies from Fundación Ortega y Gasset in Toledo, Spain.
Santos-Negrón has exhibited both nationally and internationally with recent shows at Coleccionismo Contemporáneo de Arte Latinoamericano (Bogotá), Chico Art Center (California), Large Arts Studios (Seattle), El Museo del Barrio (New York) and at the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art (San Juan). She has been featured as visiting lecturer at Universidad Veracruzana (México), Princeton University (New Jersey), University of Virginia (Virginia), Columbia University (New York) and the University of Cincinnati (Ohio).
Santos-Negrón has participated in residencies and research programs including Caribbean Linked VI (Oranjestad, Aruba), Creativity in Place (North Carolina), Palmer Project (Bayamón), St. Mary’s Artist House (Maryland), the Herbarium of the University of Puerto Rico (San Juan), and a self-conducted residency and ongoing research project in El Paseo del Río Bayamón (Puerto Rico). She is co-founder of _SITIO// Espacio y Taller Interdisciplinario de Arte, a community and solidarity based platform for projects from artists of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. She has received several awards, including an artist fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (Puerto Rico) for Campechada 2023; a traveler fellowship from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture for the Museum Association of the Caribbean’s Conference (Washington D.C., The Bahamas); CERF+ artist fellowship (Vermont); the 2019 BORIMIX award (New York) for the Valor y Cambio social currency project; and the Merit Scholarship from Maryland Institute College of Art.
She is also a professor of visual arts, independent curator and director of the Museo de Arte de Bayamón in Puerto Rico.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My art practice seeks to preserve the experience and memory of the social, political and ecological territories of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean through the exploration and study of the landscape. I use drawing, photography, sculpture and installation to develop projects that are mainly nourished by field expeditions and research in direct contact with nature. The work is created with found resources such as organic materials, high-consumption industrial supplies, paper, photographs, sound and mixed media, among others. This practice frames my daily experiences as part of the social construction of the contemporary landscape.