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Rooted in Puerto Rico. Open to the Caribbean. Reviews, interviews, essays, archives.

29/06/2026

✨ ENTRE LÍNEAS continues.

This edition features Jean Baco Ortiz, a Puerto Rican artist whose practice moves through Afro-Caribbean spirituality, oral tradition, folklore, and the histories embedded within Puerto Rico’s southern landscape. Through fire, water, memory, and cultural research, his work explores how histories that rarely appear in official archives continue to shape the present.

More than an interview, this conversation explores folklore as historical record, painting as cultural preservation, and research as an act of remembrance. Rather than illustrating the past, Baco investigates how memory survives through landscape, spirituality, and the stories communities continue to carry forward.

What happens when history survives outside the archive?

Can a painting preserve memory as powerfully as a document?

📍Entre Líneas: A Conversation with Jean Baco Ortiz is now live.

📝 Subscribe to Archivo Local on Substack to read the full interview.

Before Puerto Rico became a tourist destination, before postcards reduced it to beaches and palm trees, the island was shaped by plantations, forced labor, and communities that found ways to preserve their histories outside official records.

14/06/2026

📚✨ AL MARGEN is officially live.

Today I’m launching Al Margen, a new editorial series within Archivo Local dedicated to the artists, histories, movements, and cultural moments that continue to shape Puerto Rico long after they leave the spotlight.

The first essay begins with a simple observation:

Everyone knows Monet.
Few know Oller.

Francisco Oller is often described as Puerto Rico’s most important painter, yet his name rarely appears in broader conversations about nineteenth-century art despite his direct connection to the artistic circles that helped define modern painting.

This first installment explores Oller’s life, his relationship to Impressionism, and the lasting impact of his work on Puerto Rican cultural history.

This is not a review.

It’s a return.
A rediscovery.
A conversation with history.

📖 “Everyone Knows Monet. Few Know Oller.” is now available.

🔗 Read the full essay through the link in bio.
📝 Subscribe to Archivo Local on Substack for future essays, interviews, and archival research.

Going back on the life and legacy of Puerto Rico's most important painter.

12/05/2026

what makes something art?

after seeing marcel duchamp’s work at MoMA, i kept thinking about how one porcelain urinal managed to permanently alter the course of contemporary art. not because of technical mastery, beauty, or craftsmanship, but because of a question.

what happens if this is art too?

duchamp rage baited the entire art world over a century ago and somehow we are all still responding to it. every time someone stands in front of conceptual art and says “i could do that,” they are still participating in the exact conversation he introduced in 1917.

because maybe the point was never the object itself. maybe the point was the reaction.

new review now live on substack.

What makes something art?

28/04/2026

✨ ENTRE LÍNEAS continues.

This new edition features Diego Sotomayor-Irizarry, an artist whose practice moves through agriculture, ecology, material systems, and the unresolved realities of Puerto Rico. Through coffee plants, solar-powered greenhouses, concrete casts, and experimental installations, his work asks how an island shaped by extraction can still imagine new forms of survival.

More than an interview, this conversation explores coffee as colonial history, waste as future archive, and art as a method of research.

What happens when science enters the exhibition space?
What happens when art begins with land, energy, and dependency?

📍Entre Líneas: A Conversation with Diego Sotomayor-Irizarry is now available.

🔗 Link in this post to read the full piece.

Before coffee became a daily habit, it was already an empire.

27/03/2026

✨ ENTRE LÍNEAS continues.

This series is a space for conversations with contemporary Puerto Rican artists, moving beyond the review and closer to the realities behind the work. Process, doubt, labor, and everything that doesn’t always make it into the exhibition text.

This time, the conversation is with Saki Sacarello, whose practice is rooted in observation. From everyday scenes to quiet moments that often go unnoticed, his work transforms the ordinary into something that holds tension, humor, and reflection.

What does it mean to sustain an artistic practice while working outside of it? What does it look like to build, pause, return, and keep going?

This conversation moves through those questions.

📍Entre Líneas: A Conversation with Saki Sacarello is now available.

I had to climb a set of stairs to reach the studio.

24/02/2026

I’ve been sitting with this album for days.
Not just listening but feeling it.

Rosalía’s ( .vt )LUX is not simply music; it’s a meditation.
On language. On faith. On the body. On what breaks us, and what brings us back to ourselves.

It’s imperfect, intentionally human, and radically intimate. A reminder that light doesn’t need to be polished to be real.

Read the full review — link in bio.
Follow for more.

A meditation on language, faith, and the beauty of imperfection.

22/02/2026

✨ ENTRE LÍNEAS is officially live.

Today I’m launching Entre Líneas, a new interview series within , dedicated to intimate and honest conversations with contemporary Puerto Rican artists (and eventually the diaspora too). This is a space to go beyond the review, beyond the artist statement, and closer to the real process, the memory, and the humanity behind the work.

The first conversation is with Jason Pulgarín, an artist whose practice moves between nostalgia, humor, pop culture, and something quietly emotional. His work feels playful at first glance, but it carries weight. Like color can be a form of survival.

This is not just a Q&A.
It’s a studio visit.
A chronicle.
A conversation that stays with you.

📍“Entre Líneas: A Conversation with Jason Pulgarín” is now available.

🔗 Link in bio
📝 Subscribe to my Substack to read the full interview.

Before I met Jason Pulgarín or even saw him in person, his work had already captivated me with its vibrant blend of whimsy and depth.

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