Born in 1990, Joiri Minaya is an artist of Dominican and US American heritage who studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales in Santo Domingo, the Altos de Chavón School of Design, and Parsons the New School for Design in New York. Her work critically examines and disrupts traditional and modern perceptions of a fantasized tropical identity through a multidisciplinary approach. Minaya’s explores and reclaims identity, aimed at deconstructing and releasing the histories, cultures, and notions imposed upon her. This journey is not just about unlearning but about reconciling her lived experiences across different cultures, from her upbringing in the Dominican Republic to her life in the US and the broader Global North. She creatively navigates the dissonances and misunderstandings, leveraging them as a source of creativity. Her work confronts and manipulates the external gaze that objectifies her, fulfilling its expectations only to subvert them, thereby reclaiming her power and autonomy. Through her interdisciplinary practice, Minaya delves into the constructed nature of tropical identity.

Woman-landscape (On Opacity) #15 engages with Édouard Glissant’s concept of opacity as a form of resistance against the reduction and commodification of identity. By blending portraits of women with “tropical” textile patterns, Minaya obscures and protects her subjects from being easily consumed, challenging the stereotypical association of women with exotic landscapes. This series underscores the artist’s commitment to complicating and enriching our understanding of tropical identity through visual resistance and narrative complexity.
Together, these works critically examine identity, culture, and representation, making Minaya a key figure in contemporary art’s discourse on decolonization and self-determination.