Juana Valdés: A Journey Through Art, Identity and Migration
Words by Elisabeth Campbell
Detail of Terra Incognita et Nullius Rediscovered – The World a New, 2023.
Photo by Zachary Balber.
Art, for Juana Valdés, is a conduit; a discourse; an archive.
“Art could be anything and everything,” she says in a video call while traveling.
As an Afro-Caribbean Latinx artist, Valdés explores race and gender, migration and transnationalism, labor and class — both weaving and unraveling material culture through the lens of postcolonial history. In plain language: Valdés looks at what surrounds her in the complicated and institutionalized identity of the United States and turns it into substance, a tangible thing. Her multidisciplinary practice includes printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, video and photography, shifting the focus from the American majority to the BIPOC voices that frame the sociopolitical context of postcolonialism.
“I didn't know that I was Black until I came from Cuba,” she says. She paused — thought — then clarifies: “I was not made aware of my physical color, and the way other people respond to my physical color, until I came to the United States. “I travel back to Cuba, and it’s not that racism doesn’t exist there,” she says. “It is there, but the institutionalized racism, the way it works in the United States, it’s not the same.” Valdés was raised partially in Cuba and partially in Miami, furthering her career and pursuing opportunities in New York City into her adulthood.
“I remember I was in New York one day, trying to figure all this out,” she recalls. “I was walking down Canal, and this pickup truck [goes] by. The person yells ‘n—’ out of the truck, and the truck keeps going. And I'm just like, ‘I can't believe that this is still the dynamics that you are exposed to.’ In an unconscious way, it triggered me … It made me say, ‘You're gonna go back and sort out this insane, intrepid history of migration as a Caribbean woman.’”
Valdés is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow in the fine arts discipline. Her work is rooted in the understanding that objects and images can carry stories of displacement, survival, belonging and — on occasion — the very idea of home. “What I've been doing with the work is sort of unraveling that history of colonization,” Valdés says, “tying it to contemporary moments in time that help explain a lot of the dynamic[s] of it in ways that make more sense to contemporary audiences.” For Black people, access is revocable, Valdés explains. “[It’s] understanding that you're going to walk into a room, and before you even walk into [that] room, people will have made decisions about you, who you are,” Valdés says. “You gotta fight against a lot of things: invisibility, the biggest one of all. You have to convince people that they want you — they want to hear you, they want to see you, that what you're saying has meaning and it has value.” Valdés, whose practice spans more than 30 years, believes expanding the dialogue takes time and persistence. She draws on documentary strategies to characterize and contextualize the American idea of “the other.”
“When people go look at the work, [they] should not be able to tell that I'm a woman,” Valdés emphasizes. “You should not be able to tell my race. When I started to make the work, I really didn't want those things to be the dominant things that defined the work. I wanted the work to be about these other relations and aspects of life that were impacting me, and I thought were impacting a lot of other people. It's not just me; it's society.” Valdés says that at the beginning of her artistic journey, people did not understand her willingness to jump from medium to medium, subject to subject.
“But when you see the body [of work], one thing informs the other,” she says. “It comes back.” Her work is positioned at the intersection of concept, creative nonfiction and social practice, engaging critically with the dynamics of the United States and those of the Global South. She sees herself as always on the verge of transition, forever having something to create, convey and communicate. “Have I made my magnum opus?” she asks. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to. I’m still making work that has meaning … I think the most important thing is [that] you always want to find the right way to represent yourself for you to be heard.” For Valdés, the question isn’t whether she’s made her best yet; it’s whether she’s communicating the urges of society that she feels compelled to share. The point of Valdés’ practice — the desire for her art — is to make history visible through a contemporary lens.
“It brings a sort of unconscious responsibility,” Valdés says. “I'm feeling it, but I can't even articulate it just yet. But it does give you a sense of acknowledgement that you have achieved something. It's up on the wall, and no one can take it down; it's yours. And that way, it feels really very fulfilling.”