Although Puerto Rico is ostensibly part of the U.S., it has only recently entered into a sustained conversation with the international art world. This shift unfolded alongside a renewed focus on the Caribbean—one in which the art world, arguably ahead of today’s geopolitical interests, helped increase the region’s global visibility alongside cultural figures like Bad Bunny and the stars of reggaetón. When EMBAJADA launched 10 years ago, the gallery was among the first spaces explicitly aiming to promote the newest generations of Puerto Rican artists on an international stage. Behind it are Christopher Rivera and partner Manuela Paz, who were then living and working in New York and keenly aware of the absence of platforms capable of propelling Puerto Rican artists into the U.S. and broader international art scenes. Rivera, himself an artist, had moved to New York to pursue a master’s degree at Hunter College but ended up working at the legendary Marlborough gallery.
They initially launched EMBAJADA in 2015 as a project space instead of a commercial entity. “We weren’t thinking about running a gallery the way we do now—doing art fairs, representing multiple artists or actively helping to build their careers and visibility,” Rivera recalled when Observer visited the San Juan space. “It was definitely an artist-run initiative, born out of necessity. In 2015, there was a real lack of contemporary art spaces in Puerto Rico, and we felt an urgency to create one.”
He remembers those early years vividly. On Thursdays, he would fly to Puerto Rico, start installing exhibitions that night, continue on Friday, open the show on Saturday and then fly back on Sunday night or Monday morning to get to his job at Marlborough.
“What started as an experiment in San Juan has grown into a program built on trust and curiosity, and shaped above all by the voices of the artists who have made it what it is,” Manuela Paz told Observer. For her, reaching the decade mark is less of a goal ticked off than a source of renewed momentum, fueling their desire to keep moving forward and continue amplifying ambitious ideas.
Observer readers have likely encountered EMBAJADA in the U.S. in recent years, as the gallery has become a regular presence at fairs in Miami and New York, while also staging pop-ups in the city and collaborating on international projects. ‘Embajada’ is Spanish for embassy and, as the name suggests, the gallery has been committed from the beginning to giving international exposure to Puerto Rico’s vibrant art scene. “We were already embedded in the art world, particularly in New York’s international scene, and we wanted to build a bridge between that and Puerto Rico,” Rivera said. “From the beginning, my guiding goal has always been to position Puerto Rico within a wider international art conversation.”
At the same time, Rivera acknowledged that there has always been an unavoidable political dimension to this mission. “Given our colonial status, there’s often a lack of real empathy or understanding. I felt a responsibility to engage with that—to operate almost as an ambassador.”
Last year, EMBAJADA participated in two fairs in New York and staged two pop-ups, and 2026 is shaping up similarly, with two fairs and additional pop-up exhibitions in the works. But acutely aware of the pressures involved, Rivera and Paz have deliberately avoided opening a permanent space in New York. “Many friends have galleries here, and they make it work—but the stress is much higher, especially with rent,” Rivera reflected. “I’ve also seen many friends close their spaces. I’d rather keep it flexible.”
And so EMBAJADA maintains a single permanent space in San Juan, housed in a historic building from the 1960s that has been largely preserved in its original features and subtly adapted to function as a gallery. “This gives us stability and allows us to focus our energy where it really matters,” Rivera said, noting how fortunate they were to purchase the building before real estate prices surged. “There was that brief window after the pandemic when it still made sense, and it really worked out for us. Now that we’re turning 10 years old, having that permanent space feels crucial. It gives us a sense of security for the next few years, unless something completely unexpected happens in the world.”
The San Juan location keeps EMBAJADA deeply anchored in its Puerto Rican identity, functioning as an essential platform for engagement and education with the local community. Exhibition happenings are rarely limited to a single opening night fête; every show at the gallery is activated through multiple events. These gatherings often feel like parties—and intentionally so. “Puerto Ricans love to party,” Rivera laughed. “When I first opened the gallery, I came with a very New York mindset—openings from six to eight, then dinner. That never worked. People arrive at eight. You have to adapt.” And that adaptability, he added, is how you make art accessible to a new generation.
For the closing event of the gallery’s current exhibition, Rivera is organizing something more performative than a conventional finissage. “I’m doing a comedy roast, but it’s a roast of the colony. It’s timely. It’s going to be called Que Viva la Colonia. It’s funny, but it’s also political,” he explained, pointing out how humor, performance and assembly become tools to draw people in and inspire conversations.
On view during our visit was a solo exhibition by 72-year-old Puerto Rican artist Pablo Delano, “My Paradise Is Hell.” Expanding Delano’s long-standing investigation into Puerto Rico’s visual and colonial histories, the exhibition centers on a striking series of color photo-collages tracing key moments from the American invasion to the island’s contemporary colonization through tourism and the branding of paradise. These works are accompanied by sharply witty assemblage sculptures made from found objects, which playfully yet incisively address the tension between Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean traditions and Western classical and neo-mass-media aesthetics, along with the symbolic systems of power and value they sustain.
At the entrance, one of his most compelling works, The Sweet Life, juxtaposes a white ceramic sculpture of a cherubic young boy holding a vessel of refined white sugar with a Black madama figure holding a fiber basket of brown sugar. Ants crawl across the sugar, gradually transforming the brown into white through extraction. Through these dissonances, Delano confronts the enduring trauma of slavery while exposing how myths of paradise and progress continue to obscure deeper histories of exploitation, displacement and resistance.
Rivera first encountered Delano while visiting the most recent Venice Biennale, where Delano, whose next exhibition will open at MASP São Paulo, became the first Puerto Rican artist to be included in the main exhibition. At the time, he had been living in the U.S. for many years, most recently in Connecticut. Rivera decided to reach out, and a studio visit kicked off a conversation that would lead to their collaboration. “I told him the doors of our gallery were open—that I genuinely admired his work,” Rivera said.
While EMBAJADA’s program has consistently foregrounded emerging Puerto Rican artists deserving of international exposure, Rivera has never restricted the gallery’s scope to a single generation. Delano is not the only elder artist to receive renewed visibility through the gallery, which has also showcased early work by Daniel Lind-Ramos, well before the acclaimed MoMA PS1 exhibition brought him to broader institutional recognition.
As the gallery marks its 10th anniversary, it also welcomes 10 new artists into its cross-generational roster, further strengthening a program that already brings together some of the most compelling voices in Puerto Rico’s contemporary art today. Joining the gallery are not only established figures such as Paolo Delano and Edra Soto, but also a group of rising talents, including Georgina Treviño, whom the gallery will present at NADA New York in May; Joshua Nazario Lugo; Taína Cruz, who will participate in the forthcoming Whitney Biennial and was recently spotlighted by the gallery at NADA Miami; as well as artist-choreographer Kíani del Valle and Jonathan Torres, both of whom will also feature in EMBAJADA’s upcoming presentation at NADA New York.
Yet, asked to define contemporary Puerto Rican art, Rivera resists a singular narrative. Some artists are overtly political. Others draw more directly from lived experience within Puerto Rican culture or work to retrieve and revive traditions. He cites Jorge González Santos as an example—an artist whose practice fluidly moves between art, design, installation and collaboration, working with artisans across Puerto Rico and engaging endangered craft traditions. “He gathers that knowledge, incorporates it into his work and passes it on to younger generations through workshops. In that sense, his practice becomes a way of recognizing Puerto Ricanness as a living culture,” Rivera explained.
Others, like Radamés “Juni” Figueroa, draw heavily from everyday social spaces—such as bar culture—as a lens onto broader cultural dynamics. Gentrification, particularly in the post-pandemic period, has become another pressing theme across practices, alongside renewed scrutiny of U.S. influence and the fragile political and environmental ecosystem of the Caribbean.
EMBAJADA’s upcoming exhibition will feature Jean-Pierre Villafañe, a Puerto Rico-based artist whose work sits at the intersection of painting, architecture and political memory, addressing gentrification, land use and the afterlives of colonial and neoliberal development on the island. Titled “For Sale,” the exhibition centers on paintings inspired by images of iconic buildings in Santurce and Condado. “One painting depicts a former high school in Condado that was left abandoned and later proposed for sale to private investors to be converted into a hotel,” Rivera said. “There was strong community resistance—locals insisted that if it were sold, it should remain a school or serve an educational purpose.” That tension between development, memory and community lies at the heart of both the exhibition and Puerto Rico’s current public debate.
On the institutional front, Rivera acknowledged that museums in Puerto Rico have made some progress in recent years, but he also points to persistent structural constraints—most notably chronic cuts to public funding and a growing reliance on private donations, as institutions operate within the broader context of prolonged fiscal crisis and government debt restructuring. While private and corporate donors are increasingly stepping in, this often introduces potential conflicts of interest and pressures on programming.
As for collectors, Rivera notes the emergence of a younger generation in Puerto Rico that is increasingly interested in supporting contemporary art, particularly as visibility has grown. Still, he describes the situation as mixed. “There’s a lot of potential, but younger collectors still need much more education. There’s so much cultural offering, so many things happening at once, and without a solid art system, it’s easy for people to get lost,” he said.
Rivera readily admitted that EMBAJADA would be challenging to sustain solely through the local collector base at this stage, underscoring the importance of international networks. From the outset, the gallery adopted collaboration rather than territorial expansion as its growth strategy. “Our goal is definitely to keep growing, and collaboration has been central to that. I’ve worked with many galleries in New York, and I think that’s essential. I’m probably one of the few galleries that have collaborated with so many others at art fairs.” Past partnerships have included Charles Moffett and Proyectos Monclova. In March, EMBAJADA will collaborate with Madrid’s El Apartamento for a pop-up exhibition alongside its fair presentation.
Rivera agreed that Puerto Rican art is finally receiving increased international attention, much of it emerging organically in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. He points to the 2023 Whitney exhibition “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria,” curated by Marcela Guerrero—curator of the upcoming Whitney Biennial with Drew Sawyer—as a pivotal moment that helped place certain artists on the map. “That kind of momentum only happens because someone creates that exposure,” Rivera noted, whether through a gallery, a curator, or an institutional platform. Yet he emphasized that such opportunities remain limited on the island, making it challenging for artists to establish a sustained international presence.
Music, Rivera agreed, has also played a significant role in drawing global attention to Puerto Rican culture—and, indirectly, to its art scene. Not by coincidence, one of EMBAJADA’s previous exhibitions was titled “Museo del Reggaetón,” deliberately conceived to engage the wave of visitors traveling to Puerto Rico for concerts. “People weren’t just fans of one artist,” Rivera says. “They were fans of a culture.” Located within walking distance of the concert venue, the gallery attracted visitors who wandered in, sometimes believing it to be an actual museum.
Rivera believes that no single factor drives cultural visibility—it is always a convergence of elements. International museums, particularly in the U.S., are beginning to catch up with the Caribbean, and facilitating institutional acquisitions has become one of EMBAJADA’s priorities. “It’s been a slower process than we’d like, but we’re starting to build real momentum,” he said. Today, the Caribbean occupies a central position in international discourse, both culturally and, more recently, politically.
Some of Delano’s photo-collages felt hauntingly timely during our visit, resonating with contemporaneous events as planes and ships bound for Venezuela departed from U.S. bases in Puerto Rico. At the same time, the island continues to undergo rapid gentrification and unsustainable price increases. “What we’re living through right now feels incredibly immediate—it’s happening in real time,” Rivera reflected. “There’s a new wave of colonization happening in Puerto Rico, sadly.” In a darkly ironic way, he added, this reality gives deeper meaning to the gallery’s name. “Embajada is intentional. We are still a colony, but we’ve built our own embassy to represent Puerto Rican art to the world.”
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